When February 29th viewings backfire

For the fourth time, I have chosen the arrival of another February 29th as the occasion to watch “the worst movie I can find.” The tradition started when I happened to watch the remake of The Wicker Man on February 29th of 2008, then decided to make a thing of it with Howard the Duck in 2012 and Manos: The Hands of Fate in 2016.

None of those films were disappointments in terms of the desired outcome. Each were awful in their own special way, offering howls of laughter and/or disbelief. Only Manos may actually be among the 20 worst films I’ve ever seen, but the candidacy of the others for an extremely rarely reoccurring series like this one was clear.

Well, in 2020, I’ve screwed it all up.

I didn’t have an obvious candidate leap (no pun intended) to mind this year, so I polled the good people at my Flickchart Facebook group. I had scanned the dregs of the global rankings on Flickchart for titles I hadn’t seen, and presented them with a list of choices, saying I would watch the one that got the most votes. They included such personal blind spots as Glitter, The Love Guru, Chairman of the Board, Alone in the Dark, Crossroads and Leonard Part 6. From Justin to Kelly was leading when I stopped counting the votes on the poll.

But I'd also given them the option to add a choice in the comments below, knowing of course that they'd have little idea what I had and had not already seen. This is how a groundswell of support for a different movie started. One commenter mentioned Christian Mingle, a 2014 film starring Lacey Chabert and directed by Corbin Bernsen, whose title I had heard come up in similar contexts in this group before.

Then the choice was seconded. Then the choice was thirded. And so on. I don't know if it actually ended up with more votes than From Justin to Kelly, but then again, a lot of people don't read the comments below, preferring to vote in the poll and be done with it. I decided that the crowd had spoken and had produced a choice for me that was historically bad, not just the kinds of generic misfires I had been providing them as options.

So I declared Christian Mingle the winner a month ago, the day after I posted the poll, and waited for February 29th to roll around.

I almost had to call an audible and go for From Justin to Kelly after all, as I couldn't find Christian Mingle to stream or purchase on any of the sites I regularly deal with. But lo and behold, there it was streaming on YouTube, in full, unexpurgated form -- "hidden" from those who might seek to take it down for copyright reasons, I suppose, only by having its title appear in Spanish.

Yesterday, I watched it.

And I liked the movie.

It's a risk you take any time you watch a "terrible" movie. I watched The Hottie and the Nottie for similar reasons eight or nine years ago, and I also liked The Hottie and the Nottie. Look, you can't hate every movie that most people hate, any more than you can love every movie most people love.

If you had asked me to guess why the good people at my Flickchart Facebook group had nominated Christian Mingle for my consideration -- because I did not specifically ask them -- I would have guessed the following two reasons:

1) It has a laughable execution, with terrible craft that includes, but might not be limited to, the acting, the editing, the camerawork, the song choices, and the presence of boom mics in the shots.

2) It is laughably tone deaf about how it communicates its obvious agenda of catering to a Christian audience, or possibly making believers out of those who are not.

Before I address those points individually, let me remind you of a core maxim I follow when it comes to film criticism. And that is, I meet every film on its own terms. If a movie is about ballerinas, I judge it as a movie about ballerinas. If a movie is about people who have sex with corpses, I judge it as a movie about people who have sex with corpses. I don't want to turn one into the other, and whether I am the intended audience for it or not, I need to judge it as though I were.

Christian movies are a prime example of this. If a movie is being made to speak to a Christian audience, I will try to put myself in the shoes of that audience. A movie being a Christian movie does not disqualify it from being a good movie. As one example, I am a big fan of the Kirk Cameron movie Fireproof, about a firefighter who learns to believe in God in a way that helps save his marriage. I just thought it totally worked.

Not to tarnish their good name, but I suspect the Flickcharters who nominated Christian Mingle have not seen any other Christian movies. I suspect the fact that they felt like they had walked into the wrong movie theater -- a phenomenon I am familiar with, believe me -- meant that they had a prejudice against the movie that they could never shake. Instead of giving the movie itself a fair shake, they instead sought to amass evidence that the movie was bad, rather than considering the idea that it might be good. It was guilty until proven innocent.

Of course, the reverse should also obviously be true -- just because you are trying to give a movie the benefit of the doubt does not mean it should blind you to the movie's faults. So let's consider those two categories I mentioned above.

1) Is the movie executed poorly?

No. The acting in it is fine to good. The filmmaking is workmanlike, perhaps, but never once distracts with an example of sub-par technique. The songs are Christian pop songs, but that's in keeping with an agenda that the film doesn't try to hide. It's a Christian movie, as the title quite obviously indicates, so why shouldn't it have songs about loving God? I would not expect otherwise.

I closely watched the structure of the story to see if it broke any basic rules, and there was only one I could find. The story is told from the perspective of Chabert's Gwyneth, and every moment on screen is something she could have witnessed or known about, with one exception. At one point the story feels like it's important for us to be privy to a phone conversation between the man she meets on the Christian Mingle dating website, Paul (Jonathan Patrick Moore), and his judgmental mother, played by Morgan Fairchild. This temporary and solitary break from Gwyneth's perspective should have been avoided, probably, but it's hardly reason to deduct any serious points from the movie. (As a side note, Fairchild was one of the first actresses I had the hots for when I began "noticing girls" back in the early 1980s, from seeing ads for her movie The Seduction on cable. As I was watching the movie, though, I was calling her Loni Anderson in my head, rather than remembering her actual name.)

As I read up a little on the film, I found that some people were offended by its presentation of the residents of a Mexican village -- there's a little bit of a white savior thing going on here, as there's a section featuring white Americans on a Christian mission to help restore a village that was damaged by a hurricane. But I didn't consider there to be anything egregious about this. I thought the film makes a pretty good effort to be racially inclusive, as when Gwyneth does start to find her way to God, it's through a church mostly comprised of black congregants.

So let's move on to ...

2) Is it Christian in a tone deaf way?

Here again the answer is no. A truly tone deaf movie about Christianity would make all the Christian characters unblemished heroes and all the non-Christians one-dimensional heathens. Really, though, there isn't a single unambiguously good Christian or unambiguously bad non-Christian.

So let's start with the Christians themselves. When we meet Paul, it's clear that the movie considers him a bit dorky. He's too buttoned up, he's a little awkward. When Gwyneth takes him to try sushi, he has a really hard time swallowing the bite and says he's more of a "cheese steak type of guy," or something along those lines. And I can tell from this scene that the movie is lightly critical of Paul for his closed-mindedness. This is definitely a movie that thinks sushi is good.

So then let's move to Paul's parents. His father (David Keith, looking quite larger and quite different from the last time I'd seen him) is a bit of a blowhard given to corny rhyming phrases -- his silly refrain regarding the Mexican village is "From door to door, we shall restore." At his urging, a number of parishioners go to lunch at a restaurant called Steak & Cake, where the only thing on the table is a plate of large steaks and several cakes on raised platters -- like, way more cake than the people present would need. There's no vegetables or anything. This movie is making fun of the excessive American myopia of a restaurant that serves only steak and cake, and pins that on these people who are supposed to be our "great Christian heroes."

And then let's look at Paul's mother. She is suspicious of Gwyneth from the start. (If I have not said it already, Gwyneth is a Christian in name only -- she can't remember the last time she went to church and does not know the Bible at all.) As it turns out her suspicions are warranted, but she comes across as a highly judgmental character who does not give Gwyneth really any chance at all before deciding she's hiding something. She's prissy and uptight and does not really strike one as a shining example of the type of Christianity you would expect a movie like this to be prizing.

Then there's Kel Kel (Jill Saunders), the girl Paul has known since childhood who is his obvious intended match. She represents exactly the type of Christianity Paul's mother prizes, and she wants Paul and Kelly to end up together. But it's quite obvious this movie knows Kel Kel is deficient as a character, a bit shallow and possibly even a bit backstabbing, even as she does things that have the appearance of being kind and generous. It's clear the movie doesn't think of her as a shining example of Christianity either.

Probably the closest example of the type of Christian the movie thinks is great is Gwyneth's "black friend," Pam, played by Saidah Arrika Ekulona. She works at the advertising agency with Gwyenth. And no, she doesn't always rise above the limitations of the "black friend" role, but this is hardly the only movie guilty of that. What she does do is present an alternative version of Christianity that is not in line with the religious right overtones of Paul's family. She's actually not a member of the predominantly black congregation Gwyneth joins, but rather, a "secret Christian" who only reveals her Christianity to Gwyneth when Gywneth is farther along on her journey. Gwyneth never suspected because Pam doesn't wear a crucifix necklace, to which Pam responds that that's really not her style.

The thing Christian Mingle gets right about Christianity is that there are "styles" of Christianity. You don't have to be white saviors charging into Mexico to help save a community devastated by a hurricane. You can be a non-crucifix wearing, by all accounts very hip black woman who works at an advertising agency. You can be another hip woman who works at an advertising agency who loves sushi and loves wearing spunky outfits. (Chabert's wardrobe is really great).

So let's look at the non-Christians to see how they fare.

Gwyneth has a greek chorus of secular friends who only pop up in a few scenes. They are basically supportive friends. They don't act snarky when she signs up for a Christian dating site, they just wonder if she will be revealed as not the same type of Christian that those people are looking for.

Then you've got her boss at the ad agency (Stephen Tobolowsky) and the agency's biggest client (John O'Hurley). Which, by the way, were two faces I loved seeing pop up in this movie. These characters have no idea about Gwyneth's dating life so they make no comment on her Christianity or lack thereof. They are just part of the work plot.

Still, a lesser movie would undercut these two characters who presumably have no faith. Tobolowsky, as her boss, would be particularly likely to be a dick. He's definitely eccentric -- he wears around a captain's hat as his agency is called Maritime Advertising -- and he gets (justifiably) annoyed at Gwyneth on a couple occasions when she's falling down in her duties. But ultimately, he is presented, in a way I thought of as quite clever, as a man who has his own kind of "faith." The movie makes the point that you have to have a little faith in the product you are shilling in order to properly shill it, and the product O'Hurley's character makes is a pill that's supposed to re-grow hair in bald people. Tobolowsky is such a person, and so that's the thing he has faith in -- and he expresses that faith in a really touching scene. In a way, this movie is supporting the idea of believing in something -- whether it's Christianity or regrowing your hair. I find it essentially optimistic in a way that's unafraid to be secular.

O'Hurley's character is basically just comic relief, as kind of a variation on J. Peterman, but he's harmless.

I know I've spent a lot of time on how the film conveys its Christianity, so let's just summarize by saying that it doesn't lay it on nearly as thick as you would expect. Really clueless Christian movies start with the Gods and Jesuses right from the start, and this one really doesn't. Even though Bernsen and Chabert are both Christians who speak openly about their faith, they are shrewd enough to know what turns people off. Then again, even Kirk Cameron can do this subtly when he wants to.

Obviously I experienced this movie very differently from most people. On Letterboxd, here's what the spread of its user star ratings looks like:

That's 557 half-star ratings compared to the 39 who gave it three stars, one of whom is me.

Again not to denigrate my fellow Flickcharters or anyone else who hates this movie, but I do wonder if hating Christian Mingle feels like some people's duty in the current culture wars. Like, if you say you like Christian Mingle, you are somehow helping Donald Trump get reelected. I understand that impulse, though I can't endorse it. Christian Mingle is more nuanced than that, I think.

I think it can feel scary to say you like a movie like Christian Mingle -- I feel scared just writing this post. Scared for a number of reasons. For one, that you'll think I have no ability to discern good from bad, and will never trust my critical opinions again. But also, scared that you will think I'm a "crazy Christian," or that I may be starting my own "path to Jesus."

But just how I hope most people are getting over being afraid to make a comment where someone might "think they're gay," I don't think I or anyone else should be afraid to say that a Christian movie is good without someone "thinking I'm Christian." Being able to appreciate something intended for a certain type of person does not mean you are that type of person, but then again, so what if you are?

I watched Christian Mingle on the morning of February 29th when I was away for the night with a friend, and he was still asleep. (I'm not gay! Ha ha.) I did give temporary consideration as to whether I should try to "salvage" my February 29th terrible movie by watching another candidate -- say, From Justin to Kelly -- when I got home later on.

I ultimately decided against it. (In fact, I re-watched my favorite movie of all time, Raising Arizona.) I ultimately decided that I'd made a good faith (ha ha) effort to watch something truly terrible, where all existing evidence stated it was terrible. Just because it had not, in the end, been terrible for me, does not make it a failure for this February 29th "series."

It just serves as a reminder that movies can always surprise us, that our preconceived notions are often wrong, and that maybe we shouldn't even have those preconceived notions.

Being surprised is the reason we watch movies.

Amen to that.