For reasons that remain elusive even to the most brilliant physicists, our particular reality in the Multiverse will soon include a movie based on the Christian-centric dating website Christian Mingle, which is named Christian Mingle because the Universe is cruel.
E! Online claims the movie is “hotly anticipated” but doesn’t specify from which insane asylum they heard that from.
Killing two birds with one stone, the online dating site devoted to lonely Christians looking for their literal soulmate, serves as both a two-hour promotional video for Christian Mingle (the website) and a pitch for Christianity (the religion).
In what may turn out to be a masterstroke, the company bankrolled a feature film with actual actors, albeit budget-level ones and presumably people (probably, Christian ones) will pay money to see it. While the movie looks awful, it does represent some sort of milestone in movie-advertising synergy. The Lego Movie was only the beginning, now any #brand worth its salt is going to be running to Hollywood in a bid to get rich while cross-promoting!
It’s not hard to see the appeal. For many years, advertising was a costly venture with ambiguous results. Sure, the hope was that the money you spent on television ads or product placement in big films would turn into increase brand awareness and therefore bigger sales, but by no means was that a guarantee and the spending-to-profit line was vague and muddled. That’s about to change.
Rather than worry about how to shoehorn your product into the latest Michael Bay movie, you can simply create your own. The plot can be wrapped around your product, and you can force the beleaguered scriptwriters to include any number of savvy product pitches couched within the dialogue. Remarkably, if done in just the right way, people will pay you for the privilege of seeing your advertisement.
While Lego Movie was a big-budget, well-reviewed blockbuster, Christian Mingle seems to just be content to exist. Whoever wrote the film (Psych’s Corbin Bernsen directs) seems to have spent more time adding cliches into the film, than trying to avoid them.
She’s a hopeless romantic living in the Big City…
The character of Gwyneth Hayden (played by Lacey Chabert) is so painfully romcom standard that They Came Together, a movie intent on lampooning movies like this, would dismiss her conceit as too precious.
- She’s a 20-something who has a “great career” (they make a point of literally spelling that out for the audience in big, pink letters), but has been unlucky in love (again, written out in big, pink letters).
- She lives in New York or somewhere like that because that’s what all 20-somethings do.
- She has a high paying job that mostly involves her talking to people about her love life, save for one big meeting near the end of the movie (I’m guessing)
- She has a sassy black co-worker (sigh)
- and a gaggle of girlfriends whom serve only to utter dialogue meant to explicitly tell Gwyneth that she’s a single loser who needs to find a man and fast.
- In a moment of desperation, she does something crazy to set the “fish out of water” elements in motion.
- Later she ends up falling hard for the person she never would have considered.
- Even later, on the drive home you question every decision you had made in your life that led you to buying a ticket to Christian Mingle.
She is possibly the most religiously ignorant human being on the face of the Earth
While the movie is intended to be a romcom, it could easily be an incredible character study about a woman who – despite living in one of the most religious countries on Earth, is so focused on her Great Career and Unlucky Love Life that she managed to avoid all religiosity that culturally, she must inherently be bathed in daily. Here is a woman so completely tuned out to Christianity, the religious faith of nearly 90% of all Americans she interacts with on a daily basis, that when she needs to learn about Christianity (and quick!) her first idea is to go to a book store and read “Idiots Guide to Christanity.”
Chapter One: Who is this robed guy I see statues of some times?
It’s, of course, extremely telling that when a religious movie attempts to portray non-religious people, the default assumption is that non-religious people are simply uninformed about the glories of God. It can’t be that Gwyneth has a firm grasp of Christianity, but simply rejects it. She must be incredibly, unimaginably dense. If only more people would learn about Christ, these believers reason, then they would have to feel the way I do about faith.
The premise makes no sense
Gwyneth is desperate to find a good man (Remember ladies: dating a man = happiness, fulfillment, and maturity), but it’s only when she turns on the television and sees an advertisement for Christian Mingle (an ad within an ad) does she decide to try online dating.
It’s not a bad idea, but why would she – a non-believer who knows absolutely nothing about Christianity – chose to register for Christian Mingle. There are, of course, dozens of online dating sites that are more generalized and don’t require you to be baptized before you register. Instead, she signs up for the one that is least likely to be a good fit for her.
Later, she acts like a deer in headlights when the man she eventually starts dating assumes she’s Christian. Nope, sorry Good Man, she’s not a Christian, just an idiot.
The Christian love interest is perfect, because Christianity
As far as the trailer lets on, Gwen’s new love interest is divinely flawless. He’s handsome, charming, family-oriented, nice to a fault, and trusting. He’s not a human being, and possibly not living at all – some sort of mechanical contraption calibrated to be the Ideal Christian. Obviously, just being in his presence would be unnerving. He doesn’t seem fun to be around. Yet, Gwen can’t help but fall head of heels for him.
While infiltrating his family and church (with all the not-quite-getting-it fascination of an anthropologist studying a previously uncontacted tribe), Gwen begins to notice how great Christians are. They are happy all the time and have values and even laugh once in a while. She tells her friends that once she was welcomed into church her “life had purpose.” Before that she was basically just waiting to get hit by a bus. Good Man opens up a part of Gwen that she didn’t know existed. It’s from this Eden that Gwen is cast out when it’s revealed (in the trailer) that she isn’t a believer after all and she had been lying to Good Man the whole time!
Does Gwyneth Convert and win back the heart of her man?
Probably. The trailer leaves it ambiguous, but it seems pretty likely that she does. For one thing, Good Man is a Christian so therefore he is inordinately forgiving. For another, the last “gag” the trailer shows is Gwen praying over coffee (even Good Man thinks that’s stupid, Gwen!) and features her speaking directly to God. Boy, even though Gwen is a Christian now and finally in a committed relationship with Good Man she sure does have a lot to learn. Come on, Gwen isn’t it obvious that praying over coffee is stupid, whereas praying over a meal or before bed is beautiful and infinitely more effective?
Watching her bumble her way through religious cultural norms looks to be a hoot! I can’t wait for this film to hit theaters in October so I can avoid it until it plays one hundred times on ABC Family in the coming year.