Having some doubts…
The story’s out of the Christian Post, regarding a film called The Waiting Game producers out of Colorado hope to make, if funding comes through.
The producers of the movie said they are taking cue from popular comedies and adapting them into something palatable for Christian audiences.
“I love all the Judd Apatow movies – ‘40 Year Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up,’ ‘Superbad’ – they’re all great,” Rich Praytor, a co-producer and co-writer of the film, told The Gazette.
“So we wanted to take something like that into the Christian arena.”
It’s to be about a Christian guy who gets ditched at the altar and wonders if he should still wait until he gets married (whenever that’ll be) or throw his abstinence to the wind and get himself some. The Post notes Ted Haggard’s cameo role in the Youtube trailer. While at a cafe, he overhears the plan to get laid (“It’s not like it’s going to wind up on the front page of the newspaper”) and tries to warn the protagonist. As Haggard was embroiled in his own front page sex and drug scandal a few years ago, I presume this part of the film is supposed to play for laughs but Haggard smiles as he says it and it’s kind of creepy, actually. Don’t have sex outside of marriage or you might become the next Ted Haggard? Hell of a warning label.
I tried to watch the trailer but I wound up quitting in the middle. Over-the-top acting and crappy “special effects” were soon evident and it’s clearly a movie I’d avoid like the plague. The premise reminded me of a different movie, actually, called 40 Days and 40 Nights. It’s a tepid comedy featuring Josh Hartnett whose character has been dumped by a woman now engaged to someone else. He gives up sex (and everything related) for Lent. Then he meets someone new and complications set in. It’s been a while since I watched it but I seem to recall he’s unable to abstain that long, and I think he blows his no-sex commitment during a one-night stand with someone other than this woman he thinks he wants.
Unrelated, yet not: on Monday night I went to see Bridesmaids. I expect people who’ve experienced wedding party rivalries got more laughs over those parts than I did but it was entertaining. I found myself slightly annoyed over the fact that the fat one wound up being the one most laughably, deliberately gross (thus making it acceptable, as usual, to laugh at fat people) but in the end I appreciated the fact that she was the one that had the most self-confidence out of all the wedding party women. Everyone else was stewing in the juices of their worst moments to date and Megan (played by Melissa McCarthy) just Carpe Diem’d her way through the whole film, living it up and livening it up. She dispensed good advice, too.
Back to topic, I certainly can see why Christian film companies try to mimic popular movie styles for what they hope will appeal to their core believing audience but these sorts of heavy-handed Christian films are only going to appeal to a subset of the population. I doubt all those who’d label themselves Christian would line up to see The Waiting Game over a Judd Apatow film. I’m not a huge fan of his stuff, myself, but I know that I’d sit through the whole of Talladega Nights twice (a film I managed 18 minutes of) before I’d watch another minute of The Waiting Game. That’s not an atheist opinion; that’s a movie goer’s opinion.
What say you?
One Minion's Opinion 