A bad movie, is a bad movie. It has nothing to do with religion.

There are three very critical components to a movie: acting, story, and cinematography. The most critical of the three, in my opinion,  is acting. When I see a movie with a bad actor, it immediately jolts me out of the fiction of the story and into reality, where all I can see is the man behind the curtain.

This thought was especially poignant today as @jesusneedsnewpr tweeted this link: http://tiny.cc/FHxnS, and the room was abuzz.

Below is the offender.

As you can see from the conversation that ensued, the statement, “Christians shouldn’t make movies” came up a lot. I think people’s knee-jerk reflex was made before they really thought about the statement they were making. If I bought a house, and the house was built poorly, and the builder happened to be Jewish, it would be absolutely absurd for me to say “Jews shouldn’t built houses”. Apply that same example to any other culture or religious group and you’ll get the same logic. It’s absurd.

It’s not about Christian movies or Christian movie makers…it’s about good vs bad art. Anybody can make any movie, but when the production value (acting, story, cinematography) of said movie doesn’t come close to matching that of ridiculous sitcoms with canned laughter…it’s open to public debate. I am a Christian, but I don’t defend this move ’cause I can tell from only seeing the trailer; it sucks. Call a bad movie a bad movie.

If people get offended because the people who made the movie happen to believe the same thing about the origin of species or who Jesus of Nazareth was, that’s them misunderstanding the criticism. At the same time, the critics shouldn’t assault a religious group because one (or some) of its members made a bad movie. As Saint Augustine said, “Never judge a philosophy by it’s abuses”.

Stop overreacting people. Ticket sales will determine who should and shouldn’t make movies.

Although I will say that I can’t stand the fact that churches and youth groups use this kind of crap and quickly adopt it into their camp as being a great “tool for witnessing” or something like that.