Jesus, Mary and Joey

This is a real disappointment for a film with such a fine cast. Despite the attempt to promote religious tolerance, understanding and disapproval of religious pretentiousness, it still comes across as an attempt to promote Anglo-American Christianity by using skeptics, who are, of course, presented as somewhat immoral characters.

The film seems to be promoting a message that says "It's okay to accept others who are different then you, but only as long as they're devout, Anglo-American Christians", which, I suppose, is okay if you want to show the film in an Anglo-American church, but besides being somewhat pretentious, it's also just a boring subject.

If I could re-write the script, I would re-write it so that the point it makes is that Christians aren't good people because they're Christians, but rather that good people are Christians because they're good people. This point seems to get lost in this film.

Jesus, Mary and Joey played at the Kansas Film Festival on 09/11/05. I guess this film has been sitting on the shelf for a while but it was delightful. Steller cast which includes Jennifer Esposito, Charles Durning, Tess Harper, Olympia Dukakis, Dan Lauria, Jason Gedrick, Stacy Keach and others. A wonderful Romantic comedy with a close knit Italian-American family, the Vitellos youngest son Joey falling in love with a fundamentalist WASP-y girl Mary played by Marley Shelton (nice to see her again). This is a religious romantic comedy that asks questions about faith, hope and love. Joey meets Mary and starts questioning his Catholic faith. Mary who went though a serious illness when she was younger starts questioning her religion (not her faith). Her father played by Stacey Keach puts the "fun" in fundamental but isn't all that helpful. I usually don't like films about religion but this is something special. Both Mary and Joey learn that faith and love matter, not dogma. And the course of true love (both with each other and God) never runs smooth. Wonderful film and the photography is beautiful. See it and you'll have good Karma.

I laughed and was inspired as I watched this sensitive portrayal of a complex relationship between Joey, a young Roman Catholic, and a born-again young lady named Mary. The central characters were complex, not the one-dimensional types often seen in this kind of story. (I am tired of seeing born-again Christians portrayed as either "holier-than-thou" or hypocrites.) Additional characters were somewhat zany and made this a really funny movie to watch. I especially enjoyed the contrast between the two families, although they were too stereotypical. The most appealing feature of the movie is the development of the dynamic relationship between Joey and Mary and also the growth of Joey's character. The script was written by Vincent Pagano, the actor who played Joey, and I would like to see more from him.

I just saw this little charmer under the title of

WELCOME BACK MISS MARY on Showtime ON DEMAND, I just wanted to kill some time & watch anything before my main film tonight.

This was a nice surprise, with basically a little or no name cast, this is a very well thought out screenplay, The author seemed to hit all the right notes, in what could have been a sloppy cliché ridden script. OH yes there still are clichés, but handled deftly, the acting is a pure delight by all the large cast. I know I want to see some of these actors again.

Next I have to look this film up to see when & if it was a theatre release, & when it will be on Showtime again, as I will want to record & keep this one.

Rating *** (out of 4) 88 points (out of 100) IMDb 8 (out of 10)

This movie was sold to me under false pretenses. I thought it was a romantic comedy, but it's just a religious promotional film. The characters and acting isn't all bad, but the story is weak at best.

What I got out of this was: "We're Christians, we are good because of our faith in god, and everyone that don't believe in god are immoral, horrible people." As a person that believe in science and facts, and take fairy tales as what they are, fairy tales, this was a 1h45min waste of time for me. If they had toned down the Jesus part and focused more on romance and comedy, it would have been watchable, but as now, it's not, unless you're extremely religious, but then you don't need to watch it, since you have already bought into the propaganda.