I’ve always for a long time had a principle that in order to criticize something, you have to have real knowledge of it. For example, how dumb do the people who boycott movies, without having seen said movie, look marching around holding signs? Politicians who give speeches in congress about gangsta rap after reading a transcript of one verse of a song to me are total dweebs. Well, Jamie and I have been asked by church people several times, “Have you seen Fireproof yet? It’ll change your life!” After hearing about how bad Left Behind was, I wasn’t in a hurry to see Kirk Cameron ruin another movie. (Disclaimer: I haven’t yet seen Left Behind, so I won’t rag on it too much.) Well, after being asked about 30 times if we’d seen the movie yet, I relented and put it in my Netflix queue. For awhile it was easy to say, “Why no! I haven’t seen it yet. But I do have it in my Netflix queue.” This bought me some time, lots of time. I had about 80 movies ahead of it, so I figured I had a decent chance of Jesus coming back to Earth before I actually had to watch it. With my luck, it would be playing on the video monitors in heaven’s huge lobby on the way to have that chat with St. Peter. Well, after enough time, Fireproof came in the mail and it was time.
I’m so glad Jamie and I watched it at home alone instead of in a group at a church function. One, it made it easier to fast-forward through the lame parts. I could just turn on the closed captions and set the dvd player to 1.6x and cut down on the pain. Second, it was almost like Mystery Science Theater 3000 with Jamie and I adding our own dialog to the movie. Since the dialog was totally sanitized, I had to add the required expletives during the fight scenes, after which Jamie would slap me. I think we would have been asked to leave by a bible study group if we had watched it with them.
One thing I want to make clear right away. The Love Dare sounds like a great book. All the things that he was doing in the movie to win back his wife, on the surface, sound like awesome advice. Even though the dialog was a bit cheesy, the fact that Kirk’s dad was there for him and gave him good advice besides “just dump her” was really great to see.
But I think the movie did a poor job of capturing reality. The situations didn’t feel realistic for the most part. In the real world, his wife would have been screwing the doctor at work for months before deciding to leave. From my experience, Kirk’s battle with internet porn would have lasted maybe 10,000 times longer than the minute and a half we see on screen. Sexy stud doctor at work might have said something like, “Well, if your wife wants you, then fine. But right now, she choose to get some hot lovin’ from me because you can’t handle business, loser! And I’m gonna keep on tappin’ that sweet a$$ until she decides to leave.”
One last thing. The Love Dare advised him not to say anything bad about his wife. Well, at some point that has to stop. Otherwise he’ll turn into a total codependent and build resentment after resentment about how his wife is behaving. Marriages aren’t fixed in 43 days. It takes counseling and time to restart and rebuild.
But if the movie did do one thing it’s instill hope. Most people who are having problems in their marriages seek divorce because nothing else they’ve tried seems to work. The are at the end of their rope and don’t know what to do. The thought of a fresh start is very appealing and helps ease the pain of living this dead life. The good thing is that part is true, at least. Anything broken in a marriage can be fixed. It takes some new knowledge and a lot of patience, but marriage is not hopeless. If both people are willing it can be done, and the movie shows what to do when one or both aren’t willing yet. I’m just not so sure that the general public would be swayed by this movie to keep trying. But since the divorce rate from Christians and church-going people is close to the same as the general public, the movie isn’t a waste.
This could have been a great movie. As it was, we just survived watching it. The church that has been producing these movies has a great idea going. But if they would get a real scribe to write them, I think they’d get farther in the marketplace. It seemed like the dialog was the product of a worship planning meeting. Ten to fifteen people sit around a conference table and butcher every creative idea until it’s the least common denominator of either offense or controversy. I hope they keep doing these movies, and gain the confidence to stretch a little and deliver a more realistic product.