The article begins:
When brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick were looking for inspiration for their third feature-length film, they turned to God for help.
"To be honest, I prayed about it," Alex Kendrick said. "I said, 'God, would you give me an idea that will impact all of our culture.' "
While he was out jogging and praying one day, the idea for "Fireproof" came to him. He footed it over to his brother's house about a mile away and told him the story: A firefighter who lives by the mantra "never leave your partner behind" at work is about to do just that in his personal life.
Okeydokey. Next I had to hit Rotten Tomatoes to check the reviews. I wasn't going to discount it; it could be a great flick. Regardless, I got what I expected: a bunch of reviews noting that the selling point is the heavy-handed preaching to the converted, serving up an otherwise unimpressive story/production. Then I noticed that RT allows people to leave comments in response to the different reviews, and this got me all hot and bothered. Go look up a book by Michael Moore (easy example) on amazon.com, and you'll find a zillion comments from people who rant with such insane, frightening levels of hate and idiocy that you become rudely jolted back to the reality that we are a doomed people. Isn't that fun? Oh, c'mon!
I flipped through one with a good number of comments, and the predictable laughs ensued. Then I looked at the review excerpts again, to find the one that I thought would best elicit high quality duh.
"Fireproof isn't merely preaching to the already converted; it's helping to further alienate the unconverted and the skeptical." - Ken Hanke
Found it! I thought this brief line so perfectly nutshelled the biggest problem of any heavy-handed approach to pushing a possibly-controversial idea: it makes the unconverted potentially defensive and reactionary, and you end up sabotaging your own cause (or in the case of this movie, a theme, an issue, etc... I'm not pretending that the film-makers were on some mission here). Again, the easy example is Michael Moore. His overly broad strokes, sarcasm and self-righteous sneer can betray his content, which, were it to stand more by itself (which he did best in Fahrenheit 911), would have a far greater effect in changing people's minds, educating them, etc. But he's so polarizing w/his "us vs. them" swagger. Don't get me wrong, I love Moore, but I keep wishing he'd remove himself more and maintain a distance in his films/shows, letting the content speak for itself.
Digression transgressed. Apologies. So, to get to the punchline, here's the money shot comment aimed at the above reviewer:
"For a non-Christian to critique a Christian film to me is mean-spirited, dishonest and stupid."
HAW HAW HAW!
