Dozy condescension

Mark Steyn

Saved!

(12A, selected cinemas)

Saved I follows the template of your standard high-school comedy: there's a clique of in-girls headed by a preening teen queen, and assorted oddball outsiders — a Jewish girl, a gay guy, a fellow in a wheelchair. The switcheroo is that this isn't your average high school, but a Christian high school.

Lord help us. In Godless Hollywood, I'll bet they were howling with laughter when the boys pitched that one. When it eventually opened in the rest of America, it sank without trace. Granted the large market in Britain and elsewhere for films affording foreigners the opportunity to scoff at Americans, I would be surprised if it did much better overseas.

In my part of the world, Christian schools tend to be basic, unshowy affairs that enable parents who are dissatisfied with the local grade-school to get a pri

vate education at an affordable price. It's hard to believe in the existence of a school like American Eagles Christian High because the joint seems to exist mainly for the purposes of cheap jokes. The basic one is to stick 'Christian' in front of everything: Mary's mom gets voted the region's 'Number One Christian Interior Decorator'; Pastor Skip's son is a big star in the 'Christian Skateboard Association'. The teen slang is the same as in any other teen comedy except with Jesus inserted at every opportunity: 'That was totally Jesuscentric!' And Pastor Skip runs a ganstafied morning assembly: 'Give it up for the Lord Jesus! He's in the house! Let's get our Christ on!' At which everyone looks perky and sways and waves.

USA Today called it 'irreverent' and 'subversive'. Au contraire, if you wanted to be irreverent and subversive, you'd have set it at American Eagles Wahhabi Madrassah and had great sport with the pseudo-hip imam. But, though deriding Christians is obvious and risk-free, it still depends for its effectiveness on a passing acquaintance with the subject-matter, and there's little evidence of that from Brian Dannelly (writer-director) and Michael Urban (co-writer). 'Guess what?' says one girl. 'Jesus appeared to me in my fish tank.' It's hard to be genuinely funny when you're so determined to patronise your own characters. So we get wall-to-wall white-bread Christians who are witless, superstitious, shallow and insensitive ('What part of the world has the worst heathens?'). There are few scenes showing what goes on in the classroom, though there is an Easter pageant featuring Pastor Skip's son in a gold-lame loincloth. 'That's what I call being hung on a cross,' says one girl appreciatively.

At this point, the plot kicks in. Dean, a 'Christian figure-skater' played by Chad Faust (which would make a great name for John Kerry's point-man in Florida), tells his girlfriend Mary (Jena Malone) that he thinks he's gay. So, in a leap that's not entirely convincing, Mary decides that Jesus wants her to sleep with Dean to make him un-gay. Shortly afterwards, Dean's parents discover his copy of Honcho under the bed and he's sent off to to 'Mercy House', a 'Christian treatment facility', to undergo 'de-gayification'.

Mary, meanwhile, discovers that, like her famous namesake, she is with child. Unfortunately, she's seen by a couple of schoolmates leaving her local pregnancyand-abortion advice centre. 'There's only one reason Christian girls go to Planned Parenthood,' says one.

'She's planting a pipe bomb?'

'Okay. Two reasons.'

Mary goes back to school, stares at the big cross high up on the wall and prays: 'Shit! Fuck! Goddamn!' In an instant, she's lost her faith.

'You've become a maggot for sin,' declares head bitch Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore). 'Mary, turn away from Satan.'

Holy ghost-writers, where are you? The giant plywood Jesus on the grass outside the school has more depth than these characters. It may well be the case that some religious groups are judgmental and convinced they're better than everyone. But it's hard to expose that when you're even more judgmental and certain that you're better than the people you're sneering at for thinking they're better. A film mocking ostentatious religiosity would be more persuasive if it weren't so lumberingly preachy itself.

Can you guess where we're heading with this one? The school prom maybe... A heavily pregnant Mary dancing with the Pastor's son. . . The gay guy escaping the de-gayification centre and turning up with his new boyfriend... The devout Christians exposed as hypocrites. . . A touching, tolerant scene in the maternity room of the perfect 'alternative family': the teenage single mom, the teenage gay dad, the dad's boyfriend, the mom's boyfriend, the boyfriend's Pastor dad who's getting it on with his son's girlfriend's mom, etc... . And a concluding homily about how `no one fits in a 100 per cent... Why would God make us all so different if He wanted us to be the same?'

Well, that's not quite what the JudaeoChristian God is saying. 'What is man that thou art mindful of him?' wonders the Psalmist. 'For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. . . ' God asks us to rise above our nature and our appetites: that's the difference between us and the beasts of the field; that's what puts us a little lower than the angels. But, as Hollywood sees it, whatever's your bag, God's cool with it and these uptight Christians need to get with the beat. After 90 minutes of this film's dozy condescension, you can only marvel at Hollywood's near-total ignorance of a large chunk of its local audience. No wonder they thought The Passion would flop.