Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
Jesus Christ Superstar High School and the End of the World as We Know It:
Saved!, The Day After Tomorrow
6-2-04 Knight at the Movies column
By Richard Knight, Jr.


























Director and co-screenwriter Brian Dannelly has set his debut film Saved! in the world of the Christian youth
movement, a subject so rich in comedic possibilities that it seems Heaven-sent.  That he and co-screenwriter
Michael Urban get so many details right in this pointed, sunny black comedy before it turns into a benign
Christian fairy tale earns them lots of Hail Mary’s.  Out producer Michael Stipe has also blessed the film by
assembling a crack team of young actors who can still easily pass for the high school teens they portray.

Teen virgins, the dark-haired Mary (Jena Malone) and golden boy Dean (Chad Faust), are happy to follow the
dictates of their Christian peer group and wait to consummate their love for each other until Dean hesitantly
admits that he thinks he’s gay.  Mary loves the sinner but can’t abide the sin!  What to do?  After a hilarious
vision that Mary erroneously interprets as a sign from Jesus to try and “cure” Dean, she knocks on his bedroom
door preparing to “bomb him with love.”  Dean, already in the mood due to his illicit copy of Honcho magazine,
quickly succumbs to her seduction.  “Thank you Jesus,” Mary sighs, fulfilling her Christian duties and her carnal
desires in one fell swoop.

But Dean’s parents find the Honcho and tell Mary that they’ve shipped him off for deprogramming (while I
imagined the product placement competition between Honcho, Men, and Colt magazines).  Mary confides in
Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), her wheelchair bound brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and the other member of
their religious clique, Veronica (Elizabeth Tai) about Dean’s Dark Secret, leaving out their “healing” encounter.  
Mary’s confused at what Dean’s parents have done but righteous rich bitch, Hilary Faye, the most popular girl at
American Eagle Christian High School, silences her doubts, “You’re not born a gay, you’re born again.”

Mary quickly discovers she’s pregnant and just as quickly realizes she wants to break the rigid constraints
imposed by her fellow fundamentalists.  Mostly she wants to go to prom with cutie pie Patrick (Patrick Fugit),
the hippie-ish son of the principal of the school, Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan).

Saved! moves along as a sort of cross between an evangelical Heathers and a sweeter spirited Hairspray and
works best when it mines the paradoxes inherent in the subject matter both visually and in the clever script: the
Christian gun club with the motto “An eye for an eye,” the co-modification of hip-hop culture by Pastor Skip who
talks to the kids on the “down low” about Christ, the palatable lust in the girls’ eyes as Patrick hangs as part of a
mock crucifixion in a gold lame bikini, the crosses dangling on the ample cleavage, signifying sex and chastity, of
Mary’s red hot single mama, played with authority by Mary Louise Parker, and the teenage rivalry and nastiness
disguised as love and “concern” between Hilary Faye, Mary and her new best friend, the school’s rebel (and lone
Jew), Cassandra (Eva Amurri) – especially when Hilary Faye clunks Mary in the head with her Bible, trying to
knock the Demons out of her.

Best of all, watching
Saved! as a member of the 10% club, was seeing the Jesus freaks relegated to subculture
status for once.  Christopher Guest, the master director-performer of improv films that have set the standard for
comedy films exploring subcultures – small town theatre in
Waiting For Guffman, dog breeders in Best And
Show
, and folk music in last year’s A Mighty Wind – couldn’t have done this any better.  In the words of Joan
Crawford to Bette Davis, “Bless you.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Aren’t we lucky to live in Chicago?  You might think so after seeing
The Day After Tomorrow, this
summer’s big disaster-cautionary tale.  Mainly because Chicagoans know plenty about winter weather, know to
stay inside and turn up the heat and not go trudging around in the middle of a blizzard, and could probably shovel
our way out of an ice age.

Living in the Midwest has also given us a low to non-existent profile in these annual demolition derby movies,
which relish the destruction of both Los Angeles (always symbolized by the Capitol Records building) and New
York (in which a teeming street is destroyed of everything but a homeless person and the Statue of Liberty is
horribly defiled).  Previous offerings have included
Armageddon and Deep Impact (meteor showers), Twister
(tornados),
Dante’s Peak and Volcano (spewing lava), Independence Day (invading aliens blowing
up…everything), and
Godzilla (big lizards).  

Those last two were from writer-director Roland Emmerich who is at the helm again.  This time global warming
is the culprit, leading Earth into a premature Ice Age.  The formula of these Big Booms, so familiar to audiences
that they can be plotted out on one hand, is reassuringly in place.  There’s the opening cliffhanger, then a series
of “warning” scenes of the impending disaster (including one here of the Hollywood sign whooshing away in the
path of four – count ‘em – tornadoes).

Meanwhile, a small group of eggheads who know the Awful Truth try to warn the Authority Figure(s) who
always poo poo these Chicken Littles (just once I’d like ‘em to say, “You’re right – let’s spend the $61 trillion
right this minute and stop this thing before it happens.”).  Then – just as the teenaged loved one(s) of the
Eggheads and their ex-wives that they still secretly love go someplace vulnerable – It Hits.  

Quiet scenes of the aftermath follow and then a slow build to the Big Finish in which loved ones reunite and the
world is saved but left in ruins, while America’s inherent pluck and strength of character is validated.  Gays and
lesbians, nowhere present before, during or after the disaster at hand, we can assume, are celebrating in their
own fabulous, distinctive fashion – off screen.

The Day After Tomorrow certainly satisfies better than most of these theme park rides as movies.  Dennis Quaid,
Sela Ward and Jake Gyllenhaal do their earnest best as the windows smash and freeze about them and Ian Holm
adds quiet dignity to his scenes.  Emmerich has his formula down (and adds a terrifically funny sequence that I
won’t reveal here – jokes in disaster flicks are much too rare as it is).  Politicizing the film won’t hurt it either
(and if it helps to stop the dismantling of the EPA and puts the focus on global warming – YEAH!).

But just once – couldn’t one of these films take out the Sears Tower, Marina City or the Hancock Building?  Or
what about the Mall of America?  What do these disaster flick producers have against the Midwest?  Couldn’t we
indulge in a little guilty destruction pleasure, too?  How come Soddom (LA) and Gommorah (NY) get to have all
the fun?
A black comedy so ripe it falls off the tree, a
disaster movie so juicy with camp it melts in
your mouth