Conservative Christian group MovieGuide prepares to give its Faith & Values Awards--which films make the cut?

When a conservative values group releases a study saying that conservative movies earn more money than liberal movies, I can't say I find the results that trustworthy. In anticipation of its Faith & Values Awards Gala, MovieGuide announced the results of its study, which estimates the average gross of a conservative movie ($59 million) to be almost six times that of the average liberal movie ($11 million). I'm deeply skeptical of these figures. For example, small-budget, low-grossing indies often have "edgy" content, while there are only a few overtly religious indies every year, including two Faith & Values nominees this year, Seven Days in Utopia  and Courageous, which actually released through TriStar. MovieGuide is most known for its reviews aimed at evangelical Christians. They first list any and all objectionable content, with the summary and review secondary to the detailed list of the film's transgressions.

What kind of films win the Faith & Values Awards? The "family" category of the Faith & Value Awards doesn't say much. In the past three years, Pixar has closed out the category, with crowd-pleasers Toy Story 3, Up, and WALL-E winning the honors. Still, not all G and PG-rated films pass muster. Happy Feet 2 earned their ire. In their review, they summarized it as a "politically correct message movie that promotes radical environmentalism, magical thinking, and even same-sex partnerships and evolution." In contrast, The Muppets (which Fox News called communist) is nominated this year and earned raves for its "very strong moral worldview extolling family and clean entertainment," though they do make note "an environmentalist undertone as the oil entrepreneur is the bad guy," "upper male nudity," and, perhaps not so bafflingly, "yoga references."

The winners in the "mature" category include Secretariat, The Blind Side, and Iron Man as its recent honorees. Besides celebrating Christianity, MovieGuide also evaluates releases for patriotism, espousing capitalist, not socialist, values and whether they support conservative or liberal political issues. That explains why Iron Man, the consummate capitalist and individualist who uses his technology to defend the country, earned raves from its reviewer. Among this year's nominees are the blockbusters Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Mission Impossible--Ghost Protocol, and Captain America. The accolades given for other nominated films can be surprising. Holocaust-themed Sarah's Key was noted for its "very strong moral worldview with an anti-abortion message" and 9/11-focused Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is "pro-forgiveness, pro-family, pro-faith, and profound." They also put Terrence Malick's spiritual The Tree of Life on their list. Despite its references to dinosaurs, and "strong but non-evangelistic Christian worldview," the critic praised the movie.

 

Reading MovieGuide's obsessively thorough reviews, which count every single use of foul language and removes points for instances of political correctness, can be surprising. I'm pretty sure some of my subway rides in New York City would merit a couple of paragraphs of "content" in need of review. With its study proclaiming the popularity of conservative films, MovieGuide is clearly trying to insert itself into the mainstream dialogue, but its catalog of reviews tells a different story.