House

—Review
—Photos
—About this Series

Remember the halcyon days of the Fall TV Season of 2003, when we had the battle of the “girls dealing with the universe” shows? Wonderfalls was great, but was cancelled after four episodes. Joan of Arcadia was very good, has found its legs, and is flourishing. And Tru Calling, which was mediocre on its best days, was mercifully cancelled after one season. These days we have House versus Medical Investigation competing for audience’s attentions with similar premises. The upshot? House wins.

Medical Investigation is a way station for actors and actresses whose shows were cancelled last season: Neal McDonough (Boomtown), Kelli Williams (The Practice), Christopher Gorham (Jake 2.0) and Anna Belknap (The Handler). Sticking closely to the CSI model of the procedural, the members of the mobile medical team from the National Institute of Health pursue disease outbreaks instead of murder scenes. The gimmicks that define the show include the blue tones that it is filmed in can be distracting, especially when one week their patients were turning blue; and the “brain blasts” (a la Jimmy Neutron) when Dr. Stephen Connor (McDonough) finally pieces together the case. However, the show is formulaic to the point of boredom: people get sick, staff looks for commonality among the patients, they run down a series of dead ends and bad leads, Dr. Connor has his brain blast, and a treatment is found. No twists, no turns, little character development; it’s like the constraints of their job limits what the writers can do with them. No amount of camera trick shots or special effect depictions of an illness will cover up a lackluster script; nor does a character’s earnestness equal an interesting character. You want better for the talented cast, but either this dour show needs to improve quickly or they need to fire their agents and put this snooze-fest behind them.

House on the other hand is everything that Medical Investigation is not. Witty, interesting, and filled with characters that, even if you don’t like, you want to watch. One of the things you learn when looking at a new show is to study its pedigree. House’s executive producers include Paul Attanasio (Homicide: Life on the Street, Gideon’s Crossing), creator David Shore (The Practice), and Bryan Singer (director of X-Men, X-2, and The Usual Suspects). Granted, pedigree doesn’t always equal greatness, but it’s certainly a good place to start.

In Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) we have a hero who is cavalier, cranky, and more than a bit of a jerk. “What would you want: a doctor who holds your hand while you die or who ignores you while you get better?” Brilliant, yet easily bored, the soap opera-loving doctor doesn’t like dealing with patients (he treats illnesses, patients make him miserable). He has to be power-played into working in his hospital’s clinic. He doesn’t believe that he’s always right, he just finds it “hard to operate on the opposite assumption”. Life’s too short and too painful, so he says what he thinks: “Humanity is overrated,” a question may seem rhetorical “when you can’t think of an answer,” “gorgeous women only go to medical school if they’re damaged,” and he tells a patient that his wife must be having an affair because he turned orange and she didn’t notice.

His staff is made up of (his) hand picked experts form a kind of super hero team, with each member specializing in a different area and bringing a unique skill set. Omar Epps’ character, Dr. Taylor Foreman, brings street smarts, as well as his medical specialty, and another character is told that she brings, well, a pretty face. The characters have a reason for being and doing, motivations beyond robots doing so for the love of the job. In a lot of ways, this is a similar medical whodunnit type show that Medical Investigation is, investigating all manner of mysterious diseases, except that it does so against the backdrop of a hospital with all of its attendant politics and patients.

“Our bodies break down ... it always happens and there’s never any dignity in it.”

“We’re to live with dignity, not die with it,” Dr. House snaps (almost all of his dialogue seems to be him snapping). Dr. House had an infarction in his thigh, and due to a mis-diagnosis, he ended up with a limp. His handicap reminds us of our own weakness. Along with these broken bodies we need to seek cures, seek doctors. Doctors aren’t here to help the healthy, but the sick. This mission statement is true of all of us: We are not sent to be served but to serve.

We have a love and fascination with our doctors. The medical drama is part of a longstanding tradition and one third of the trinity of television genres: medical shows, legal shows, and police shows. Right now, the steady-creaking-after-all-these-years ER and the wonderful sitcom Scrubs seem to be carrying on the tradition. House has smart dialogue, style, and a healthy dose of humor. Yes, its lead character has the bedside manner of a total cad, but it’s amazing how good a show can be when it has characters you want to watch.

—Review
—Photos
—About this Series

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

—Overview
—Photos

—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

Since it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that there were going to be a ton of Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith reviews, I struggled with whether or not to bother writing one. But, hey, why not add another voice to the chorus? One of the great things about the reviews on Hollywood Jesus is that no two reviewers see things quite the same way on any given movie.

Previous entries into the most recent Star Wars trilogy, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, were Exhibits A and B in making the case that George Lucas was more master craftsman than effortless storyteller. The power of his productions has been his ability to submerge the viewer in his fully imagined galaxy. In Revenge of the Sith, the detail of his vision gave his dizzying city vistas and space battles an urgency in and of themselves. But ultimately, for all of Lucas' technical wizardry, it is the story, the space opera, that draws us into the movie. And this is the story that we all have been wanting to see: the tragic finale to a good man's final capitulation to the dark side.

This time around, the movie’s plot keeps more to the things that made the original trilogy great. In Episodes I and II, the epic story of the hero—or in this case the descent of a hero—didn’t mesh well with the less-than-epic story of political drama and intrigue. Politics had plagued this most recent trilogy of movies, bogging the stories down to the point where an hour of C-SPAN held more drama. Not even serious politics—since they are of the “don’t think too hard because they don’t make a lot of sense” variety—they seemed like exercises in pontification while waiting for the third movie to come out.

And one certainly doesn’t stay up until 12:01 a.m. on opening day for great acting or scintillating dialogue, either. Unfortunately, Hayden Christensen (as Anakin) lacks the gravitas needed to show the torment of his slow descent to the dark side (especially noticed when compared side-by-side to even one line reading by James Earl Jones). But Ewan McGregor (as Obi-Wan Kenobi) seems in tune with the spirit of his character, bringing a sense of whimsey to his portrayal. Only Ian McDiarmid (as Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious) matches his performance, probably because he’s given some lively dialogue to work with. Even the best actors and actresses can only do so much with the stilted, joyless dialogue to deliver. In the end, everyone was nearly upstaged by R2D2 threatening to steal the show. Since everything about the movie had a knowing sense of consequence to it, the cast didn’t deliver dialogue—they made pronouncements.

All of which points back to the fact that it was the story—the visually stunning story—that counted. A story that abounds in spiritual implications.

“A prophecy misread could have been.” –Yoda.

One of the primary overarching themes of the movie could be described as a misunderstanding of religion. In a lot of ways, this is a journey of faith. Faith can be abused, misdirected, mistaught, even mis-believed; the faithful always fear the possibility that somehow they might depart (or be led astray) from sound doctrine. To paraphrase one sentiment in the movie: to understand mystery, you must understand all aspects of the force, not just the narrow dogmatic view of the Jedi. This makes the Jedi sound like some brand of spiritual fundamentalist. It is not bad to question your faith; some questioning is healthy. However, this critique is given by one who sees himself as the polar opposite of the Jedi.

“This is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” –Padmee

This idea of faith gets further complicated once it gets in bed with politics. The question that gets to crux of the matter is what if the Democracy they had been fighting for, the Republic, becomes the thing that they are fighting against? There are enough pointed parallels between the Empire and the state of the American government to choke Jar-Jar, but this does open the door for some valid examination. Religion and politics each their own raison d’etre. When the two blur the lines between one another, it leads to a kind of imperial religion. Spirituality, one’s faith, should inform one’s politics, not the other way around. Politics is about power and power always lusts for more power, leading to Machiavellian (or his intergalactic counterpart) level scheming. When the two conjoin, the danger rests in keeping politics from co-opting the spirituality.

This story also touches on the reality that the characters live in a state of “spoiled creation.” In Anakin’s case, he was deceived by a lie. The Sith’s passions focused inward, thinking of the self; the Jedi were selfless, always thinking of others. However, good became a matter of point of view (the Jedi were liars and power-grubbers; the Sith possessors of secret knowledge) and truth was allowed to be misunderstood (read: ignored).

The path of darkness was paved with good intentions as a good end was attempted through evil means. “Fear is a path to the dark side.” Throw in hate and anger leading down toward an inevitable path of death and destruction and you have the symptoms that diagnose the dark side, being the fallen state of man. Said another way, living in a state of broken creation means that we are being untrue to what we were created to be.

Hope for finding our way through this broken creation could be found in the power of discipleship. In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, you see what amounts to a tale of two masters. On the one hand, you have Darth Sidious, the dark master dangling temptations of power and salvation. On the other hand, you have Ben Kenobi, lifelong friend and mentor. And one cannot escape the powerful image of this being a story of a master betrayed by his disciple.

What we can’t escape is the power of learning in community. We’ve lost the idea of journeying with our teachers, the sense that teaching and knowing have a relational component. The master-student relationship is an important one when it comes to the idea of “making disciples.” In a lot of ways, people have gotten away from what the picture of making a disciple looked like. Anakin made becoming a master a reward, a power position to be obtained, rather than the act of humbly serving others. It called for a teacher to walk alongside his disciples, live life with them. The master/teacher embodies, incarnates if you will, that teaching and faith are lived out in the context of a community. No, this is not a perfect way to do it: Jesus walked alongside his disciples for three years and most of the time they didn’t seem to get the point.

“I feel lost ... I’m not the Jedi I should be.” –Anakin Skywalker

Which leads to the last element of story that this movie is about, this being a telling of the story of a Judas, one who walks in discipleship then betrays his master and his teachings: a good man, for all intents and purposes, led down a dark path because of some internal discontent. Most of us have this feeling that something is missing, but we don’t know how to fix it. Also, whether we admit it or not, there is this longing to be more, to live lives of significance.

We have this sense of lost-ness. This sense of incompleteness is necessary, as it hints of there being some greater story and purpose about life that we might be missing, one that should drive us to the Author of that Story. In our rush to plug that hole, we run the risk of filling it with the wrong thing. Anakin was lost, but he was found by Darth Sidious, then dubbed Darth Vader by him. And to be named is to be owned and defined. This led to a series of tragedies that eventuated in a wholesale slaughter of Jedi knights that echoed the persecution of the saints of the early church.

There is a lot to be explored in the themes of this movie. In short, this was the movie that everyone wanted to see, the one that took three tries to get right. A high action cinematic experience tinged with a sense of tragic grandeur, Revenge of the Sith brings the sprawling saga we’ve come to love full circle.

Like you really needed a reason to see it.

Review by Kevin Miller
Review by Ed Travis
Review by Tom Price
Review by PapaBear
Review by Matthew Hill

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

Legion of Super-Heroes

Comix Index
Review on Hollywood Jesus

writer: Mark Waid
artist: Barry Kitson

The Legion of Super-Heroes has seen several incarnations. In its complex history, the title has been started, stopped, revamped, gone edgy and dark, gone pre-L.E.G.I.O.N. (Yeah, you don’t go a more tangled continuity, in the name of pleasing old fans while creating a jump on point for new ones, than going pre-your original self. Hello, Star Trek: Enterprise.) Luckily, you need to know none of that continuity to pick up and enjoy the latest incarnation of The Legion of Super-Heroes.

The title has a simple premise: it takes place 1,000 years from now, during a new age of heroes. After a millennium of utopian peace, there is a security, stability, and order to our united world. (Yes, for all of the Left Behind brand of theology fans, it’s literally a thousand years of peace followed by the return of an evil.) But this newfound peace is at the cost of freedom and individuality (read: it’s boring).

The young are held in suspicion. They are tracked genetically via a system known as the “public service” that also filters what under-agers (those under the age of 18) see and hear. The peace is maintained by a global “science police” and the planet is a member of the “United Planets.” All the while, the society has grown so impersonal that two people in the same room talk to one another via video screen. Okay, maybe it’s not so simple, but it’s easy to get into the swing of things.

One of the daunting tasks about writing the Legion of Super-Heroes is that you have over thirty characters to juggle. Focusing on only the most popular characters misses the point of a book like the Legion (emphasis on Legion) of Super-Heroes. Mark Waid has fleshed out their individual personalities, since with so many characters, many became generic or interchangeable. This changed the team dynamic as not all the members get along, or for that matter, even like each other. We get more of a sense of the alien-ness of the members. He went so far as to re-imagine how some of their powers work.

The members of the Legion look back on the age of heroes (Batman, Superman, etc.) through a romantic lens (since, in the eyes of the law, they were costumed vigilantes). Inspired by them (they even generate their codes of conduct from them), the members retain a lot of the charmingly retro names from earlier incarnations of the Legion, in keeping with their emulation of the old heroes (or as they put it: adjective + gender = names). Ultra Boy. Colossal Boy. Dream Girl. Sun Boy. Star Boy. Light Lass. Phantom Girl. Invisible Kid. And they invite all young people to subscribe to their philosophy of reclaiming their individuality and standing against wrong. Since this is a movement created on the backs of the young, some adults view the Legion as a (super-powered) cult.

The Legion of Super-Heroes for all intents and purposes is a church. The membership is made up of different races, with different gifts, with differing personalities and temperaments, yet they are one body. As a “church,” they struggle with this question: what does it mean to be missional? Often churches are mission-minded; that is, they put on shows or do outreach along the lines of getting the community to go to the church. This idea that the church is an attraction for the world to come see needs to be jettisoned, or at least re-thought, in light of a missional mindset. With a missional mindset, one is concerned more with getting the church to go to the community. To incarnate Christ (and the Bible) puts a new light on how Christians should see themselves, since lives modeled on the Bible may be the only Bible that people may know.

However, even this “church” has to deal with fragmented ideology that needs to be integrated, as different members pursue their own agenda and competing visions. In other words, their gospel message, their uniting vision, needs to be re-thought and figured out.

Boiled down, the gospel is about re-learning what it means to be free and fully human. To enjoy community, acceptance, while reviving the concepts of socialization and interaction. To be transformed and in so doing be a part of a generational revolution that frees people from being prisoners to the bondage of society, and the tyranny of their selfish ways. And as they grow, they realize that there is a lot to learn from history and tradition that has been forsaken in the name of expediency and progress. In so doing, they are swept up into a greater mission: to be a blessing to the world. Even the galaxy.

This book hasn’t forgotten its sense of fun, a fun not seen since the Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen—even the Jim Shooter—era of the book. Yes, it is a book featuring kids coming together in defiance of adults, emulating the vigilantes and highly individualistic “cowboy” super-heroes of the past—basically, rebelling against a society that controls every aspect of their life. Yes, those themes have a particular appeal to a new generation of readers. However, they leave room for the “older” generation of fans to enjoy this run also.

Comix Index
Review on Hollywood Jesus

Batman

Comix Index

“Year One” (issues #404-407)
writer: Frank Miller
artist: David Mazzucchelli
published by DC Comics

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The year 1986 proved to be a pivotal year in the modern era of comics. Back in the halcyon days when comics cost only 75 cents (and I remember being upset by that price jump), several books came out that changed the face of comics. Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Dark Knight Returns. Man of Steel. Watchmen. Swamp Thing. This was a great time to be collecting comic books. Frank Miller, fresh on the heels of his seminal The Dark Knight Returns, turned to the main title, Batman, to write basically a mini-series within the series called “Year One.” Between these two works (along with Alan Moore’s Watchmen), interest in comic books was revitalized, even among non-comic book readers. In fact, so much interest was stirred about Batman that the Batman movie, long languishing in “development hell”, was put onto a fast track, coming out just a few years later (1989).

Years later, this book is serving as the inspiration for relaunching the Batman movie franchise as Batman Begins prepares for its debut. (And, by the way, a Watchmen movie is currently in the works.)

This “Year One” story arc spawned a series of “Year One” issues. The premise was simple: what was it like during the first year that the given super-hero donned the tights? The issues examined the emotions that drove them to pursue the life of a hero as well as letting the reader in as they were figuring out their method. Basically, they focused on their purpose, but working it out often proved to be messy.

Miller returns Batman to his roots, including David Mazzucchelli’s Bob Kane (creator of Batman)-inspired rendition. The story is simple: Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City after a twelve year absence after his parents’ death at the hands of a mugger; the event that triggered his war on crime. During that time, he’d traveled the world, training in martial arts and developing detective skills. The idea for Batman hasn’t occurred to him. After a botched attempt to attack the problem as “just another guy”, he’s inspired by the crashing of a bat through his window. Understanding the power of superstition, symbol, and myth, he crafts the image and legend of Batman.

However, the story isn’t about him alone. It is also about Lieutenant James Gordon, the future Commissioner Gordon. New to the Gotham City, he finds that he has to deal with a corrupt commissioner, a corrupt police force, and crime families. All while juggling his marriage to his expecting wife. So while Bruce Wayne is figuring out how to be Batman, Lt. Gordon is figuring out “what it takes to be a cop in Gotham City.”

“You’ve eaten Gotham’s wealth. Its spirit. Your feast is nearly over.” –Batman.

Gotham City, for all intents and purposes, is like man’s battle against his sin nature: all temptations and corruption. You see, there are no splashy villains in the story (though we do see Selina Kyle don her Catwoman gear in response to the appearance of a man running around as a bat). Instead there is only the corruption: the relentless, seemingly unstoppable, enemy within.

It never fails to amaze me how the stories of heroes echo the story of Christ.

Here you have a city, a world, caught up in the despair of its own iniquities. A man appears on the scene—before years of experience turn him into the cool, all-knowing, martial arts expert—who’s a “lucky amateur,” but still seems more than a man. He becomes a symbol of hope. He takes quite a beating and more than a few bullets, wounded for their transgressions. But even as he’s about his mission to “cleanup a city that likes being dirty,” he realizes that he can’t do it alone. He needs allies. A united trinity of a lawyer (a pre-Two Face Harvey Dent), a cop (Lt. James Gordon), and a vigilante (Bruce Wayne).

So, as Batman goes about his mission, others join him and in so doing, Gotham City finds out what a difference a few good men can make. Frank Miller triumphs in this bout of simple, yet powerful, story-telling.

Comix Index

Crash

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections


Live your life at the point of impact.

You think you know who you are. You have no idea.

Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other.

Those are the tag lines to what may be the most powerful, if not the best, movie of the year. And they sum up the movie quite nicely. This is one of those movies dependent on word of mouth. The only thing that I knew about it was that a friend's parents saw it, they convinced him to see it, and he convinced me to see it. I knew of the director and co-writer, Paul Haggis (writer of Million Dollar Baby) and I simply love Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve), so I trusted in the pedigree of the movie.

“We miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just to feel something.”

This movie examines the taboo subject of race and race relations; how we see each other and how that impacts how we act, react, and live with one another. It opens with a car crash, a fender bender, that has a Hispanic woman trading insults with an Asian woman based on racial stereotypes over Asian driving habits. A Middle Eastern father and daughter are insulted as potential terrorists when they try to purchase a hand gun. Two young black males feel slighted at their service at a restaurant, evidence of racial discrimination; though at the hands of a black waitress, because she, too, thought in stereotypes about young black males. A white couple are the victims of a carjacking; a black couple the victims of a particularly nasty DWB (driving while Black). A Hispanic man is shunned while doing his job because he looks like a criminal with his shaved head and tattoos.

As Anthony (Ludacris) proclaims, “This is America.”

Portraying lives connected by seeming coincidence, the movie feels like Magnolia or Short Cuts (though mercifully shorter), but shares the theme of interconnected relationships and stories. The movie points to two things: reality is relationships, and we live lives of overlapping stories. If this movie is about anything, it is about how prejudice keeps us from seeing the people around us as they are, with characters speaking without the benefit of political correctness obscuring how they are feeling.

At some point, we, as a people, “lost our frame of reference.” We live in a multi-cultural world, whether we want to call it a melting pot, tossed salad, or whatever new paradigm we choose to live under. We don’t often get the humiliation of going through life always being treated as a suspect, guilty until proven innocent. We don’t often get the humiliation of casual victimization. We don’t often get how our reactions to those constant humiliations fuel our anger and further hatred. Where even what should have been a binding moment of shared commonality can instead have tragic consequences.

We don't get that our fallen-ness, our lost frame of reference, has led to broken relationships and a downward spiral of anger, fear, eventuating in death. Like Jean (Sandra Bullock) says “I wake up every morning like this. Angry all the time and I don’t know why.” And race only seems to be an excuse for that anger. So how do you fight an attitude, a thought, a prejudice? You certainly can’t pass laws against these things, because these are crimes of the heart and mind. Do you expend the energy and emotion fighting every instance of prejudice or do you pick and choose your battles, sacrificing bits of your dignity along the way? Or do you get caught up in the downward spiral of destruction?

For the most part, the characters are good people (except, arguably the car-jackers). Angry, full of resentments, scared, trying to do the right thing or at least muddle through their series of moral compromises. I spoke to a cop about the problem of prejudice between cops and people of color. He told me that the only way to counter the under current of racism was for police officers to develop more relationships outside of their own race. The problem was that they saw the worst of people of all races, and like Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon), it changes them. It skews their perspective, because if that is their prevailing experience with that race, it bleeds into the fabric of their overall attitude. And they already have positive, balancing, relationships with members of their own race.

Who did this? We did. Graham’s drug-addicted mother echoes the words of Christ when she says “I asked you to find your brother, but you were too busy.” We have to have some hard conversations and build what may be some uncomfortable bridges. Like the black TV director, we may have to tell our own kind when they shame the rest of us. Like the Persian store owner, we may find our angels in the strangest of places under the strangest of circumstances. Like Jean, we may find our best friends right under our noses. Like the rookie cop, we may learn things about ourselves and what we’re capable of, and that may frighten and scar us. Like Anthony, we may mature and progress. We all are victims of racism and guilty of racism, but we don’t have to be defined by it.

At once funny, moving, angry, and absorbing, this movie is something to be experienced, shared, and talked about. I hope that it doesn’t suffer the same fate as Hotel Rwanda, a great movie that essentially falls between the cracks because people aren’t comfortable with the subject matter and the implicit call to action.

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

Boondock Saints (1999)

“When I raise my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance upon mine enemies And I will repay those who haze me. O Lord, raise me to Thy right hand and count me among Thy saints.” With that prayer, the movie, Boondock Saints, winds to life. Two Irish Catholic brothers, Conner (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy (Norman Reedus) MacManus--who happen to be fluent in Russian, French, and Italian--are inspired by a homily about Kitty Genovese, the lady who was attacked and killed while her neighbors heard and did nothing. Nobody wanted to get involved.

The boys take this message to heart as they see their South Boston neighborhood having the Russian mob muscle in on them while the Italian mob takes umbrage at the intrusion. The brothers go after everyone while being pursued by an FBI agent, Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe, in a performance just this side of a ham).

Wearing Celtic crosses, these inadvertent hitmen for Jesus take out anyone they think is evil. Hailed as heroes, The Saints of South Boston, they are “ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance who happen to come out on top.” The movie plays like an update of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish, influenced by Quentin Tarantino’s sensibilities (you can count the Tarantino allusions during the course of the movie).

This is Pulp Fiction for Christians.

It is pointless to comment on the characterization or acting in the movie. The characters are little more than stereotypes--caricatures at best--from the cops to the mafia types; all played with way over-the-top performances. But this movie isn’t about probing character study or brilliant acting: it’s about the thrill ride.

“Destroy that which is evil, so that which is good may flourish.” Such was the brothers’ epiphany after surviving a run in with some Russian mob soldiers. While this strikes quite the populist chord, the whole idea of killing for good is problematic at best, so I’ll side-step the issue of using evil as a tool for good. Instead, I will discuss their “gospel” message. “Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal. These are principles which every man of every faith can embrace!”

You see, Boondock Saints is about a call to action. To do something with your faith, take a stand against evil. Not just the mobsters, pimps, and drug dealers, but simply the indifference of good men. Faith, the movie points out, should be more than words, more than a mental assent to a few facts. It has to be worked out as action. Put another way, faith should lead to action; to fight injustice when one sees it, not just talk about how bad the world has gotten.

As they have taken up this course of faith in action, they invite others to join them. They don’t really invite as much as simply live their lives of faith, and others, seeing them, decide to join in. The FBI agent’s “conversion experience” was particularly telling. In a scene where he finds himself drunk and in a confessional booth, he tells the priest that he doesn’t believe in God, but is a man of ethics. After all, he is an FBI agent, charged with upholding the law. However, he has come to realize that the law is not enough. There seems to be a higher law at play. The priest notes that it’s “easy to be sarcastic about religion. But it’s much more difficult to take a stand.”

It’s also interesting to note that it is not until they find their father, Il Duce (Billy Connolly), do they become complete. A trinity of Veritas (Truth, tattooed on their left hand) and Aequitas (Justice, tattooed on their right); they see themselves as “the vengeful striking hammer of God.”

Boondock Saints is a smart, funny, non-stop action, though a little over-the-top. Nonetheless, it is a fun romp of a movie, thick with testosterone fantasy. And with the sequel, Boondock II: All Saints Day, due out this year and picking up where this one left off, you need to be prepared to answer the question Il Duce poses: “Do you possess the constitution, depth of faith, to go as far as it is needed?”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

—Overview
—Photos
—About pdf
—Spiritual Connections

So long and thanks for all the fish.
So sad that it should come to this.
We tried to warn you all but, oh dear.

You may not share our intellect,
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that grow around you.

To this fateful tune, the dolphins exit planet Earth and the movie, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, begins. Once again, I am faced with reviewing a movie whose source material I am intimately acquainted with, having read all five books of the Hitchhiker Trilogy and being a fan of the BBC television mini-series. I was afraid of two possible reactions: 1) that this movie would come off, especially to the uninitiated, as a trite exercise in faux-philosophy masquerading as British humor; or 2) the knee-jerk geek reaction of “they screwed up this book” (leaving me with making the a spiritual connection along the lines of “just as Jesus was betrayed by Judas, so the book was betrayed by this movie”). Luckily, for the most part (and as a further exercise in pleasing no one completely), I was spared this fate.

For the uninitiated, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is “... a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one - more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?” It is slightly cheaper than the Encyclopedia Galactica and it has the words “Don’t Panic” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

If that bit annoyed you, you might as well skip this movie. The movie veers between being clever and being impressed with how clever it is being. That is, half the time, you (hopefully) get caught up in its sense of whimsy, and the other times you are left wondering what’s going on and why the things happening on screen are supposed to be funny.

As the book puts it, the story begins on a “Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change.” That story, such as it is, is not nearly as important as seeing our heroes travel about the universe in their improbability drive powered ship.

“Things are not always what they seem.” The voice of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy seems to make the take home point of the movie. The movie, like the book, is flippant, indulging its quirky sense of humor, as it wrestles with the larger existential questions of reality: It is easy to get distracted by its irreverent attitude toward God, creation, and life’s purpose, but then you’d miss the point. It is attempting to come to terms with many of life’s questions, namely the question “why?” Why are we here? The conclusions that it comes to aren’t as important as the questions themselves. After all, when faced with the possibility that the world is about to be destroyed, what do you do? What’s really important? How would you live your life in light of this? Like Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), we don’t know our destiny and, for all our troubles, we could find out that the world was commissioned and paid for by pan-dimensional mega-beings that appear to us as mice.

“I’d much rather be happy than right any day.” Slartibartfast

This movie is all about questions, the big questions. The thing about questions is that they are fine to ask, but we have to be prepared to accept the answers. If you ask a question like “what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?” you may get an answer like “42.” It’s only when you understand the question that you will be able to understand the answer. “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” Why do we want to know the answer to these ultimate question? Like Zaphod Beeblebrox, is it out of curiosity and a sense of adventure (which translates to fame, money, and women)? Like the sperm whale that suddenly pops into existence (long story, don’t ask*) those are some of the first questions that we ask.

Why? Because we want to know if there’s something more to life.

If there’s not, we end up like Marvin, the manically depressed robot. Like Qohelet, the writer of the book of Ecclesiates, he concludes that, without hope, all efforts are futile at best or bring only pain at worst. This, in turn, begs the question, what hope is there?

“Love is far too complicated to explain.” The Encyclopedia Galactica
“Love is dangerous. Avoid if possible.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“My head is full of questions I’d like to have the answer to and non of the answers to any of them ever brought me one iota of happiness,” Arthur says. Except the answer to this question: “Is she the one?”, which is “yes.” Life is meant to be simple, us living in harmony with creation. That’s why dolphins are the second most intelligent species (after the mice, but ahead of man), because they get this. We are created at relational beings, and as such, we are caught up in the great story of a Creator wooing us back to Him. The answer is love.

The movie is full of the absurdist humor that made the book great, unfortunately, it is one of those “either you get the joke or you don’t” sort of experiences. It is not a “faithful” adaptation of the book, no movie could be, since the book was more a collection of funny asides more than straight narrative. However, it does capture the spirit of the work, and that is as much as a movie goer can ask of an adaptation from a novel. Maybe seeing the movie will create in you the need to get more familiar with the material and you will be drawn to the books. That is the reaction all good adaptations should provoke. Or, you will walk out feeling that you’ve already experienced far too much of this “I don’t see why it’s so funny” phenomenon and go see if XXX: State of the Union is still playing.

Me? Judging from the opening and closing song, “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish”, I eagerly await the Broadway musical version.

*It is one of my favorite bits from the novel preserved in the film. My other favorite–the intergalactic armies that unite to invade Earth but due to a miscalculation in size get eaten by a dog–is also preserved, but you have to sit through the credits to see it.

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