Joshua
I had the misfortune to encounter Father Girzone's Joshua back in the 1980s. Father Girzone even spoke at my parish (the leaders of whom created a schismatic church in the 1990s - no surprise).
Father Girzone - retired due to ill-health - seemed like a nice man.
But I hated the book. I thought it superficial, simplistic and inaccurate. And it advocated things counter to church teachings. My ex-wife liked it. She went with the schism.
That book was followed by more of the same ilk.
At the library the other day I discovered they'd made a movie of the first book. With the same guilty feeling one gets at having to look at an accident as you drive past, I borrowed the movie.
It did have two actors whom I've seen do some good things - F. Murray Abraham, and Gian Carlo Giannini. So I had a faint hope that maybe ...
We watched it last night.
I have to admit - it was even worse that the book.
My current wife commented that it seemed like a made-for-television movie.
I think that's an insult to made-for-television movies.
Oh, it did have that bad-made-for-kids-television-movie feel. Black and white characters. Overacting and overreacting. Over-simplistic. Predictable plot. Inaccurate about the way the church works. And there's some funny blunders - like the dead man who is visibly breathing, or the blind woman clearly wearing contacts, or a characer taking off the same garment twice in the same scene.
I found myself trying to suppress smiles.
Too bad it wasn't an intentional comedy.
Father Girzone - retired due to ill-health - seemed like a nice man.
But I hated the book. I thought it superficial, simplistic and inaccurate. And it advocated things counter to church teachings. My ex-wife liked it. She went with the schism.
That book was followed by more of the same ilk.
At the library the other day I discovered they'd made a movie of the first book. With the same guilty feeling one gets at having to look at an accident as you drive past, I borrowed the movie.
It did have two actors whom I've seen do some good things - F. Murray Abraham, and Gian Carlo Giannini. So I had a faint hope that maybe ...
We watched it last night.
I have to admit - it was even worse that the book.
My current wife commented that it seemed like a made-for-television movie.
I think that's an insult to made-for-television movies.
Oh, it did have that bad-made-for-kids-television-movie feel. Black and white characters. Overacting and overreacting. Over-simplistic. Predictable plot. Inaccurate about the way the church works. And there's some funny blunders - like the dead man who is visibly breathing, or the blind woman clearly wearing contacts, or a characer taking off the same garment twice in the same scene.
I found myself trying to suppress smiles.
Too bad it wasn't an intentional comedy.
Labels: Joshua
posted by A Secular Franciscan | 12:05 PM
1 Comments:
Just as a movie, it was lame, but not a stinker. I've seen much worse movies.
My problem with it is that it presented the church in such an inaccurate light. At least it did avoid getting into some of the issues Girzone does in the book - like divorce, birth control, abortion, etc.
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