"Facing the Giants"

Sunday night, our church showed this movie (or "film" as churches typically call these things). This was a "Christian" movie, which typically means low production values, lame acting, and total cheesiness.

This movie did have some of that, but overall was actually very well done. It was about a football coach and the struggles he was going through both personal and with his team. At times, the movie was advocating a little too much of the "prosperity gospel" in that as soon as someone told God they were in control, immediate good things happened. But, for a so-called "Christian" movie, I thought they did a good job. The football scenes were especially well done for what was an extremely low budget movie.

But the making of the movie is a story in itself. It wasn't made through the studio system. It was written, funded and filmed by Sherwood Baptist Church in Georgia (and you can tell it is a Baptist film). The church spent about $100,000 on the film. I'm not sure what they were expecting to happen, but they probably figured it would play the church circuit and go directly to DVD. However, Sony Pictures saw it and liked it and picked it up for national distribution. It got a fairly wide release nationally in theatres and ended up grossing over $10 million.

The actor who plays the coach also co-wrote the screenplay and directed. Pretty much every other cast member, extra and crew member came from the church. This was quite an achievement. I would have liked to have been part of that planning committee meeting when they decided, "hey, let's make a movie."

Yes, one could criticize this movie for being too schmaltzy at times and giving the impression that God has a vested interest in a football team winning the big one. But you gotta hand it to Sherwood Baptist Church for venturing out there and doing something no other church has ever done and succeeding in a big way.