A Quick Look at Netflix's "Fuller House"

Since this blog is called "The Christian Moviegoer," usually I would be reviewing movies. However, a classic, family-friendly sitcom just got a sequel-reboot series on Netflix. I am of course referring to Full House and the new Netflix original series Fuller House. I am a huge fan of the original show, and since I just got through watching all thirteen episodes of its sequel, I decided to do something a little different and write a short review of Fuller House. So, without further ado, here is my one paragraph review of Fuller House - Season 1.

Fuller House has the exact same premise as the original, except instead of three men raising three girls, it's the three girls from the original raising three boys and a girl. Like the original, Fuller House brings tons of laughs and features emotional heart-to-heart moments. The jokes are still (for the most part) clean. There are a handful of jokes involving sexual innuendo, including three jokes that involve homosexuality (for the record - there are no homosexual characters on this show - yet). These jokes, along with mild language and some cleavage and midriff baring outfits are a problem for parents with young children. However, for teenage and adult fans of the original, this is both a delightful trip down memory lane and some more wonderful memories with the Tanner family. Let's just hope that season 2 (come on, we all know there will be another season) is more kid-friendly than this season.

"Enchanted" - A Review

Disney has made so many movies that many films have been forgotten by movie viewers. Sometimes the reason for this is because said forgotten movies are bad. However, there are several treasures hidden among the forgotten films of Disney. One such film is 2007's Enchanted, a classic that many people have never even seen.

Enchanted is a unique Disney film that starts off like your typical Disney princess animated movie. The heroine, Giselle (Amy Adams), lives in an animated fantasy world filled with talking animals, trolls, evil queens who practice sorcery, and - of course - a handsome prince that she (literally) falls in love with. No, seriously, she actually falls out of a tree, lands on his lap, and is immediately in love with him. If that sounds goofy, that's good because that's exactly the point. The first ten minutes of the film is Disney making fun of its own princess movies by condensing the plotline of said princess movies into ten minutes. The twist comes after the prince's evil stepmother, Narissa (Susan Sarandon), sends Giselle to a "place where there are no happy endings," which turns out to be the live action land known as New York City. After this, the film because a fish out of water comedy as Giselle learns about life in the real world with the help of a lawyer named Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey). Meanwhile, Prince Edward (James Marsden) enters the land of New York City to find his missing bride, but Narissa sends her loyal servant Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) to kill Giselle before Edward can find her.

This film contains every Disney princess movie cliche in the book, and it knows it. The film constantly pokes fun at these cliches, pointing out how stupid some of these cliches actually are. It's hilarious and works perfectly. But even more hilarious is the antics of the fairy tale characters as they interact with the real world. The jokes range from a chipmunk who could talk in fairy tale land learning it can't talk in New York to Giselle thinking that a castle on a billboard is an actual castle. Of course, these jokes would not work as well without the hilarious reactions of New York residents to the antics of the fairy tale characters. From Robert's perplexed reactions to Giselle and a bus driver's reaction to Edward stabbing her bus, these reactions are spot on and well-played.

Despite the humorous way the movie sometimes treats love, it does raise questions as to the nature of true love. This is generated by the contrast between Giselle and Robert. Giselle thinks love is just warm and fuzzy feelings that you get when you're with a person, and Robert - who has already had a marriage that went wrong - prefers a more rational path to marriage. He doesn't believe that true love exists and that a good marriage depends more on the compatibility of the spouses than on a warm and fuzzy type of love. Ultimately, the film concludes that true love is really something between these two extremes, a combination of warm and fuzzy feelings and one's compatibility with their partner. This is a much more biblical view of love than the view typically upheld by Disney princess movies, and that combined with the good, clean humor of the film makes this film a worthwhile viewing experience.

Note to parents - this film may not be appropriate for some children. Check out Plugged In Online's review of this film here to see if this film is right for your children.

"Risen" - A Review

As you have probably noticed, over the past few years a huge number of Christian films have graced the silver screen. And as you are probably also aware of, the latest Christian film to land in cinemas is a biblical epic called Risen. Risen is about a Roman tribune named Clavius (Joseph Fiennes, Luther) who is tasked by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth, The Hunt for Red October) with making sure that Jesus' disciples do not steal His body after His crucifixion and claim that He rose from the dead. But when Jesus' body disappears, Clavius is tasked with finding the body in order to prevent a crisis.

I just came home from watching this movie, and I have to say that I was disappointed with this movie. Don't get me wrong, the first half of the film is some of the best Christian filmmaking I have ever seen. I only have two complaints about the first half of the film. The first complaint is that in the opening battle scene, the Roman army seems a little too disorganized to believably pass as one of the most imposing military forces of the day. The second is that Clavius's new aide (played by Tom Felton from the Harry Potter films) is introduced in a very forced manner and contributes nothing to the story other than to serve as someone for Clavius to talk to. But other than that, the first half is excellent. The acting is solid, the pacing flows wonderfully, and (with the exception of one or two minor missteps) the writing and directing are excellent. It was like watching a mystery show that takes place in the Roman Empire.

But all of this is overshadowed by the second half when the screenwriters try (and fail miserably) to turn Risen into an installment of The Visual Bible series. Literally the entire second half is scene after scene of adaptations of the scenes from the Gospels in which Jesus appears to His disciples. Aside from the fact that this is (unfortunately) boring to watch due to slow pacing, the problem with this is that the adaptations are not totally accurate. For example, when the film depicts the scene where the disciples go fishing and they don't catch anything until Jesus shows them where to cast the nets, the motivations for going fishing is changed. In the Bible, Peter decides to go fishing and the other disciples decide to go with him. However, in Risen, Mary Magdalene tells the disciples that they must go to Galilee to meet with Jesus, and on the way they need to obtain food and decide to go fishing since they so conveniently happen to be passing by the sea of Galilee.

This may seem like nitpicking, but there are other, bigger problems with the second half of the movie. One such problem is the depiction of the disciples. More specifically, how Peter and Bartholomew were depicted. In this film, Peter (played by Stewart Scudamore) is basically a grumpy old man who it seems learned nothing from Jesus' statement that we are to forgive others not seven times but seventy times seven. Meanwhile, Bartholomew (played by Stephen Hagan) comes off as a fellow who is not totally in his right mind (this is actually an issue in the first half of the movie as well). Maybe that is what the two of them were actually like, but we do not have enough information in the Bible to make the creative decision to depict them this way (in case you can't tell, I'm a stickler for biblical figures being accurately depicted in biblical films). But here is the thing that really upset me: at one point in the film Clavius asks Bartholomew why he followed Jesus. Bartholomew's answer: because of the miracles. Wrong. The reason the disciples followed Jesus had nothing to do with the miracles He performed. The disciples followed Jesus simply because Jesus called them. I could rant about this longer, but I would basically just end up saying everything that Steven Curtis Chapman's song "For the Sake of the Call" said more eloquently. Go listen to that, and then come back and read the rest of this post. I'll wait.

OK, now that you've listened to the song, we can move on to the next big problem with Risen: the fact that Jesus (played by Cliff Curtis) is actually depicted in the film. This is the main source of my disappointment because I was hoping that given the premise of the film that we would never actually see Jesus. The reason I was hoping this is because any depiction of Jesus is a violation of the second commandment. Before you get mad at me for saying that, please hear me out. The reason depictions of Jesus are a violation of the second commandment is because of the way said depictions affect the mind of the spectator. The danger of depictions of Jesus is that once the spectator gets that image of Jesus into his mind, it is very easy when worshiping Jesus for said spectator to subconsciously worship the image of Jesus that was put into his head by the depiction of Jesus that he saw. When this happens, the depiction of Jesus becomes a graven image that the spectator, on a subconscious level, is worshiping.

So is Risen worth your time and money? Well, like I said, the first half is excellent. I actually wish that the screenwriters had developed the storyline of the first half more so that the movie could have ended with the scene that marks the half way point, thereby skipping the bad attempt at making an installment of The Visual Bible. I think that doing so would not only have made for a much more interesting movie, but also would have allowed them to avoid the theological errors that are present in the film. But alas, that is not what the screenwriters did, and so I am unfortunately going to have to recommend that you skip this film.

Finding Jesus in the Movies

Stories are powerful things. When the storyteller tells a story, he has influence over his audience. The audience has permitted the storyteller the take them into the world of the story, and if the story is a good story that is well told the audience will allow themselves to totally immerse themselves in the story. The audience is able to shut out the real world and live for a time in this fictional world of imagination. Once the storyteller succeeds in drawing his audience in in this manner, he is able to influence their thinking. He does this by giving his story a theme, something he wants the audience to take away from the story. If the storyteller can find the right balance between clearly presenting the message but not being explicit about it, he has the ability to influence his audience's thinking. If the audience is not thinking critically about the message of the story (and they most likely aren't because they're too busy enjoying the story), the audience can on a subconscious level accept the themes of the story and begin to live them out. This is why it is important to be thinking critically about what a story wants to say to its audience, but that is a conversation for another post. What this post is concerned with is the themes themselves. More specifically, the theme of redemption and the way Christians tend to perceive this theme.

Redemption is a common theme in movies. Not only does it tend to be the theme of almost every Christian movie ever made, but many Hollywood productions also prominently feature this theme. Les Miserables, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Lord of the Rings are excellent examples of this. Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, a convict who seeks to escape his past. He eventually accomplishes this through a little girl named Cosette. In this story, compassion and kindness exhibited in the hero brings about his redemption. In Guardians of the Galaxy, a band of outlaws who have escaped prison find redemption by saving an entire planet. In this story, an act of heroism atones for previous sins. Lord of the Rings features a powerful ring with the ability to corrupt the mind of the one who carries it. The second film in the trilogy, The Two Towers, most explicitly deals with the question of redemption when it asks if it is even possible for someone who has been corrupted by the One Ring to come back from the corruption. We then see the answer to this question as the rest of the story plays out. In the case of Lord of the Rings, redemption is found by destroying the evil that generated the need for redemption.

There is a stark contrast between the way Les Miserables and Guardians of the Galaxy presents redemption and the way that Lord of the Rings does the same. The former two films assert that it is through doing enough good that the sins of the past can be atoned for. Lord of the Rings, however, asserts that in order to be redeemed from sin, the sin itself must be put to death. As all Christians should know, Lord of the Rings hits closer to the mark than the other two films. It is through Christ's death and resurrection that sin and death have been defeated and therefore believers are redeemed.

It is wonderful to be able to draw the Gospel from the themes of a movie. However, I am concerned that Christians have a tendency to overdo this. I have read many Christian reviews for many different movies, and I have noticed that whenever a movie deals with redemption these reviewers will begin to draw parallels between the movie in question and the Gospel. Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to Christians reacting to movies like Guardians of the Galaxy by pointing out where they get redemption wrong and presenting the good news of how we can truly be redeemed. What I object to is Christians looking for Christ figures or "allegories" to the Gospel where neither of these things exist. A popular example of this is the comic book character Kal-El, aka Superman. Many Christians have spotted parallels between Superman and Jesus Christ and have used these parallels as a reason to uphold Superman as a Christ figure. I am especially baffled by Christians who say this of the version of Superman that appears in the 2013 film, Man of Steel. Man of Steel is a great film with some great messages, but a Christ figure Henry Cavill's Superman is not. Yes, he is not of this world. Yes, he seeks to help people and do the right thing. But he is a far cry from Christ. Granted, no Christ figure will be a perfect representation of Christ, but I have trouble calling a character who struggles to determine the right course of action a Christ figure.

So when should Christians look for Christ figures and allegories to the Gospel? The key is to look at the beliefs of the story's original writer and the intent of the story. An atheist is not going to write a story that points the audience to Christ. He is not going to try to remind audiences of Jesus Christ by making one of his characters a Christ figure. Likewise, an atheist is not going write a story with the intent of presenting the Gospel, allegorically or explicitly. To say that there is a Christ figure or an allegory to the Gospel in an atheist's story is to add something to the story that was not there by the author's intent. This is a postmodern way to view movies which says that how I, the viewer, interprets the film's message supersedes the author's original intent. This would be like someone reading this post and saying that the point of the post was that Christians who look for Christ figures in movies are bad Christians - a statement which I, the author, do not agree with.

In conclusion, I have a request to make. Please do not try to put the Gospel into stories that the author never intended for it to be present in. Trying to put the Gospel into stories in this fashion is a subjective way to view stories, which is not consistent with the objective worldview found in Christianity. Let us be consistent Christians not just in the way we go about our work and in our relationships, but also in the way we view movies.