moonspinner55 Review of Saved!

Saved! (2004)

Some tart religious satire can't overcome cheap gags and the usual boy-girl antics...

[5/10 · 11 November 2006]

Jena Malone has a sweet plainness and a natural, unforced charm playing bright senior at "a really good Christian school" who's part of an elite clique until a series of confounding personal events causes her to question her faith--and reexamine her circle of friends. Director/co-screenwriter Brian Dannelly doesn't have the ear for transcribing teenagers' speech or behavior, though he does a little bit better by the adults, and Mary Louise Parker (as Malone's mother) ends up with the film's best lines and strongest scenes. In sending up the religious teen scene, Dannelly falls back too easily on familiarity or corny obviousness, yet he also wants to be sympathetic towards his characters, a symptom which usually brings out the worst in any screenwriter. The finale, at the senior prom, is full of platitudes and the inevitable pleading for tolerance, all of which do not play. This is in context, and that's fine, but what happened to the humor? ** from ****