Watched: 04/19/2025
Format: Amazon
Viewing: First (and Last)
Director: Corbin Bernsen
Job: Ad company exec
new skill: being brainwashed
Man: Jonathan Patrick Moore
Job of Man: I don't know if I ever figured that out
Goes to/ Returns to: Eventually goes to the Yucatan
Event: several
Food: Sushi
This is a movie about a mentally ill person who falls prey to a cult through a scheme posing as a dating site for Christians.
Designed to be mistaken for a Hallmark movie, this infomercial for ChristianMingle.com, a very real dating site, our film, Christian Mingle The Movie (2014), follows Lacey Chabert as a VP of Brand Management for a small advertising company. She's unlucky in love, and is absolutely freaking out that, at age 30, she's still unmarried.
The movie is written and directed by Corbin Bernsen, and so I have to lay a lot of blame at his feet, but also know he was having to make a movie for people who are maybe not really aware of how some of te things they wanted in their movie would play. The film does have appearances by the eternally lovely Morgan Fairchild, Brian Keith, Stephen Tobolowsky, Bernsen, John O'Hurley and one actress I remember who was really pushed on us in sitcoms like 15 years ago.
On the surface level, it's a romantic comedy/ drama about a woman finding God while also finding a Good Man.
On a meta level, this movie is essentially a warning shot to accomplished women who are being told they're a failure without a man. Beware: you will have your entire life destroyed by people pretending good will but who will throw you away without batting an eye.
There's something bizarre and unhinged about this movie, in how it views the secular world. Or, in fact, how it views people it considers even church-going people who don't go to the right church to not be *real* Christians (always my favorite real-life trope*). This movie believes that it's up to emotionally stunted weirdos who can't code-switch between their infantile home lives and living in society to help you by passing judgement on you, insisting only they can tell you if you're *really* going to get Jesus' love or not. Not the *average* Jesus love, but the *good stuff*.
Who this movie is for is clear. It is not for the Lacey Chabert's out there looking for love. It is for people who are like the family in this movie, who want to seem nice and be exemplars of Christ's followers, but who see everyone else as dumb, scheming, deceitful and envious of them . How else do you explain Chabert's character having any attraction to Man in this film? The insane steps she takes? In this movie, Man brings literally nothing to the table. The dude is a "nice guy" who is manipulative and abusive by the film's end, all in the name of being "pure".
The movie is intended to reinforce the notions about the outside and secular world, and reinforce the idea that what the folks like the family believe about themselves is *good*. That painful rejection is what Christ wants, not helping people along their journey or through a tough time in their life. When those travelers come along with dirty feet, you send them back outside.
Christian Mingle The Movie is a movie that believes women with a good job really need to take a more womanly job (mom, teacher, nurse), and that anyone who enjoys sushi is clearly not really jiving with The Lord.
Now, it doesn't say these things explicitly (mostly), but what it does do is tell us that everything Chabert is doing as an educated, would-be-cosmopolitan sort of woman is wrong, and that she's not *really* happy with those things. But maybe... if Chabert cut off her former life entirely, found new friends, quit her job... (she has no family to speak of in this movie) Maybe then she'd be accepted? By this family and guy who have nothing to offer and seem hellbent on making her feel bad about herself?
Essentially, it's a movie about a woman deciding to first get on a Christian dating site and then fake being a devout Christian in order to land a date. I mean, she really fakes it for absolutely no reason other than that she is fine with lying about who she is and tricking someone into liking her. But in this movie, there are no other dating sites, apps, or ways of meeting people that are not based in the 1980's - so I guess this site is it.
There are probably a half-dozen ways you could write a movie that would place the professional, secular girl on a date with a guy via the website that don't involve her totally leaning into a hare-brained lie about who she is *that she will have to commit to forever*. She is not casually looking, she is looking for a husband. And has decided to do this through deceit that will easily be discovered should this man meet literally anyone else she already knows, and that she seems both aggressive about proving she's religious while not knowing any of the micro-customs of a particular flavor of religion.
The film requires Chabert's character to feel the crushing pressure of singleness, even though she hangs out with three other girls who are seemingly unattached. It means she falls for a guy *immediately* who seems like another kid who stumbled upon Zoltar and got Big'd more than an actual adult male who is Christian. And let me be clear, this guy is an asshole. And aside from the fact that he's man-shaped and not legally attached to another woman, there is absolutely nothing that recommends him - but Chabert *loves* him immediately.
He has the energy of a home school kid who gets very angry when he comes across anything that messes with his very limited worldview, and doesn't know how to commit social niceties like "hey, maybe don't make your date feel bad for her choice of a date location". And, really, what he has to offer Chabert is not clear. That she embarks on a one-woman exploration of Christianity and the Bible is not impressive to him. It is, in fact, bad as she is not allowed to study on her own - it must be within the confines of his church's views.
Like, look, I'm not super religious, but being Christian does not make you weird. Publicly believing in Christ does not mean you wind up as a 30-year-old virgin who still talks about his parents like a giddy middle schooler who still loves family game night. Cute girls who can get guys are not going to find it charming when you act like sushi is wildly exotic - it is something you can get at the grocery.
2/3rds of the way through the movie, Chabert is found out (they find her literal Christianity for Dummies book she packed for some reason) and has to come clean. She is punished for this, and her journey to Christ - which is genuine - is rejected. Further, she joins a real church, runs into the guy, and he flat out tells her "that church is bullshit, it is not the real, true religion and Jesus will now hate you". And, yeah, the movie super-indulges in the flavor of White Savior Missionary shit that is the fantasy material for some folks. The mission occurs, by the way, at that one Mexican church set I've seen in everything from Arrested Development to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to Timeless to Westworld. Hollywood, it is time to build another Mexican church.
Most offensive is that the movie tells Chabert she looks like trash when she looks kinda like a naughty librarian or school teacher. We support you, Lacey.
Is it stupid?
Yeah, it's dumb as hell. Utterly lacking in self-awareness and ethics, it's like an anti-commercial for the very thing it's selling (a dating site and Christianity). But, also, I didn't even get into the storyline about Chabert's working for Tobolowsky at a nautical-themed advertising agency where she's supposed to help John O'Hurley sell a miracle hair-growth treatment, and the interminable pitch scene that feels like an improv bit in a middle school theater class going off the rails.
It's not often I'm straight up mad at a movie. Mostly I just expected to be bored as two people were ridiculously nice to each other in typical consequence-free Hallmark fashion. But instead, I got to see some weird, imagined journey to Christ that absolutely punishes someone for not being born into a family that belongs to a church that is half-a-degree from snake-handling.
But you kinda know how stupid this is about to get when Chabert's character, a person living in modern times in America, thinks she should pray over her coffee, fucks it up, and the guy doesn't see anything amiss. And it's all downhill from there.
This movie is absolutely pitching how much happier you'll be in their cult - once you've given up your life, your job, your friends, everything you've built given your life to God. Just ignore that mental abuse Man and his family lay on Chabert's character for not being part of The True Faith.
Look, I grew up in the church - but not the *right* church, according to many of my high school classmates (nothing like a 16 year old telling you with wild eyes that they're concerned for your soul). As I lived and live in Texas, which has always had its fair share of nutty folks telling everyone else that they're going to hell for not speaking in tongues or whatever -.my patience for this stuff is absolutely minimal. Using Christ as a bludgeon to gaslight and manipulate people and - especially - to keep them in line, is pretty familiar, and it's called Christian Nationalism. It's for people who are scared of things like sushi and women having a job where they might be the boss of a man.
I would have been absolutely fine with Chabert bumbling her way through the Bible. Maybe making fun of some churchy stuff until she gets into it. Realizing people can be Christian and be cool (my real life experience is that there is no reason you can't be both Christian and amazingly cool, lest you think I'm a weirdo who is anti-Christian or anti-Church. I'm not either of those).
Anyway - all I think now is that the real website for Christian-Mingle is likely for people I would not really want to know. And I am deadly curious who among the talent pool in this movie thought all of this was going great, who did it entirely for the money (looking at you, Tobolowsky), and what the reaction was when and if any of them actually saw the movie.
*on Thursday I went to see Kylie Minogue and took a Lyft. My driver decided to witness to me, and in discussing my parents' relationship with the church, which is central to their lives, he made sure to tell me that they probably didn't really understand what it meant to be a Christian. Which... sigh... I just chose not to give any review on the app. This situation will resolve itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment