Can ‘Faith Based’ Save Christian Comedy?
Still from “Faith Based.” Photo courtesy of Luke Barnett.
(REVIEW) New movie “Faith Based” wants to be a comedy about faith that both Christians and non-Christians can enjoy. But can it crack the code on how to make a successful Christian comedy?
So far, no one has really been able to make a Christian comedy that connects with Christian — or non-Christian — audiences.
Despite the fact that everyone knows Christian films make lots of money, those Christian movies are almost always inspirational dramas, like “I Can Only Imagine,” “I Still Believe,” or “Fireproof.”
By contrast, recent Christian comedies like “Believe Me,” “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” and “Selfie Dad” have failed to gain success among either critics or the box office.
Kevin McCreary, host of the YouTube show “Say Goodnight Kevin” (where he pokes fun at faith-based films) and host of the identically titled podcast (where he interviews faith-based filmmakers whose films he’s made fun of) told Religion Unplugged that the issue comes down to Christian audiences.
“I think [the Christian comedy] lacks an audience,” McCreary said. “Nobody wants to take a hard look at themselves — especially Christians. Christians seem to like inside baseball jokes that are safe enough for them to laugh at but not edgy enough to make anybody feel judged or convicted.”
Will Bakke, writer and director of “Believe Me,” said in an exclusive interview with Religion Unplugged that the difficulty of making a faith-based comedy comes down to genre expectations.
“People who pay to watch Christian movies are doing so to be affirmed, uplifted, and encouraged — not challenged or questioned,” Bakke said. “Oddly enough, Christian movies are not all that different from horror films. When you pay to see a horror film, your expectation is that you will be scared. It doesn’t matter if the movie has great acting, a riveting plotline or stylized cinematography. The success of that horror film depends solely on whether audiences are scared. Period. Christian cinema is the exact same, only substitute scares for affirming hand raises.”
That said, he doesn’t hold this against Christian audiences. There’s a different problem.
“The only distribution model that works for Christian movies today is one that caters to the audiences mentioned above, and they’re typically older,” he said. “Young audiences don’t look at their movie ticket purchase as some kind of vote for God the way older Christian audiences do.”
Alternatively, Dallas Jenkins, writer and director of “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” and creator of the hit TV series of the life of Jesus “The Chosen” told Religion Unplugged that he mostly puts the onus on the films themselves.
“Comedies tend to be lighter and feel less ‘important,’ and most of the most successful Christian movies have felt ‘important’ enough to the audience that they feel compelled to support them financially,” Jenkins said. “And … because of that, to be successful as a faith-based comedy you have to be really, really good, and we probably haven't made them good enough.”
Enter “Faith Based.”
“Faith Based” is a satire of the Christian film industry made by Luke Barnett, Vincent Masciale and Tanner Thomason, three alumni of Will Ferrel’s Funny or Die website. The film centers around two buddies who realize that faith-based films make insane amounts of money without being any good, so they decide to make one of their own. The project also features stars Jason Alexander and Margaret Cho.
The project has been getting lots of both negative and positive attention since its announcement. Fox News and Breitbart panned the film for being anti-Christian long before the film even had a trailer. Alternatively, since the trailer was released, podcasts and outlets with Christian millennial audiences have responded positively to both the film’s trailer and, now that the film has been released, the film itself, and the film’s creators have been guests on their shows (including Good Christian Fun and my own podcast The Overthinkers).
Film critics have been very positive about the film as well, giving it over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But the makers of “Faith Based” aren’t trying to fix the faith-based comedy. Luke Barnett, the film’s screenwriter and leading actor (also named Luke), explained to Religion Unplugged the reasoning behind making their film.
“We're not trying to make a Christian comedy. We're trying to make a comedy that Christians will enjoy,” Barnett said. “I'm hoping the same people who like ‘Good Christian Fun’ because it speaks on a niche they are familiar with will like ‘Faith Based’ for that same reason, but I'm also hopeful non-Christians who aren't as familiar with the Christian film industry will also enjoy this as a heartfelt buddy comedy.”
The film’s premise was based on their own experiences as filmmakers, seeing how much more successful faith-based films were than their own far more critically acclaimed film.
“Our first film, ‘Fear Inc,’ premiered at Tribeca before hitting #1 on the iTunes horror-comedy chart. We thought for sure we'd be getting offers left and right,” Barnett said. “But after a couple years of pitching, we were still pitching. I think ‘God's Not Dead’ had just come out. I looked at Vince and said, we should just make a cheesy Christian movie, use all the money it makes to fund our stuff. That joke became a pitch, then a script, and now I'm talking to you about the finished film.”
Barnett is also very clear that “Faith Based” is not intended to be an anti-Christian satire.
“I grew up in the church. I've seen first hand the most positive aspects of that world, and also some really negative aspects,” he said. “I didn't want to make a movie making fun of belief, or painting anyone that goes to church as villains. I wanted to make a comedy that also takes a mirror to an industry I find truly fascinating.”
Of course, Barnett appreciates the irony of trying to not make Christians villains but still getting called out for making the film in the first place. He thinks that the reason people came out so strongly against his movie without seeing it first has to do with the temperament of many Christians.
“I think a lot of Christians have this strange inability to laugh at themselves,” he said. “They take themselves so seriously. There's this weird delusion that they're some sort of minority in the country when in reality they are the vast majority. So, we laughed at the ridiculous FOX News blowback — they had never seen the movie because we hadn't even made the movie — then we used their press to our advantage. It worked out well.”
That said, Barnett believes that both Christians and atheists can benefit from the humility that comedy can bring.
“I think atheists and the uber-religious both have this odd confidence,” he said. “They know the answer. I think the vast majority of us don't. We hope, we might believe... but we don't know. At the end of the day, the unknown is scary. I think throwing some comedy on that is needed.”
So, how is “Faith Based”? Does it do everything that the creators want it to do? Well, kind of.
“Faith Based” is an extremely enjoyable, if not particularly original, comedy. It’s funny, has likable characters you root for and a payoff that is charmingly satisfying. You can definitely tell the film was made by people with experience in comedy and filmmaking.
The jokes and the character arcs are clearly set up and well executed, both with the leads and the supporting cast. It’s well shot and well lit. And for a film that is trying to ride the line between being a faith-based film and a mainstream film, it has a pretty satisfying (at least to me) arc where one of the leads becomes a Christian.
Christians worried that the film would be offensive to Christianity really needn’t be. All the jokes at Christians’ expense are extremely tame, and honestly things that Christians make fun of themselves. (And they show equal zest in making fun of their godless atheist characters.) Moreover, the character who embraces Christianity in the film is shown to benefit from it and get his life turned around from it. For most Christians, the main things to be offended by will be the content issues around language and sexual references — which are there mostly to be authentic to how 30-year-old men (particularly ones who aren’t Christian) actually behave and talk.
If there’s a weakness in “Faith Based” it’s that it’s mostly all just so familiar. Most of its jokes and commentary of Christian films have already been done before; the characters rarely grow beyond archetypes.
Even the plot of “non-Christians planning to make a buck by passing themselves off as Christians” has been used in other faith-based comedies. Ironically, the commitment to formula and seeming inability to break out of it is quite similar to the faith-based films “Faith Based” rightly critiques.
In the end, those hoping “Faith Based” would provide a model for making a successful faith-based comedy will probably be disappointed. The audience for this film will probably be pretty niche and not knock it out of the park for anyone in particular; it is not biting or original enough for people who really like satire, and it doesn’t have enough “praise Jesus” moments for people who like faith-based content.
But then, becoming a model for faith-based filmmaking was never the “Faith Based” creators’ intent. In fact, Barnett would far prefer Christians not focus on making “faith based” films at all.
“I would like to see less Christian filmmakers making Christian movies, and more Christian filmmakers making good movies,” Barnett said. “Our beliefs and values will always come through in our art, one way or another: don't force a message. If you're going to make a comedy, focus on making a hilarious movie. Don't focus on making a hilarious Christian movie.”
More explicitly Christian filmmakers echo that sentiment to some degree.
“A good movie is a good movie,” Jenkins said, “so if a great comedy gets made, it'll succeed long term.”
As true as that may be, it still doesn’t entirely help those who want to reach an audience with their comedy about their faith. It’s not as simple as “make a good movie,” because people have made good movies that haven’t succeeded financially or critically.
Faith-based comedies are important because it’s important for us to be able to laugh at the human foibles of our religion that we build around our faith. But if we can’t make those movies in a way that resonates with those audiences, nobody will give money to make those movies. And the world will be lesser for it.
That said, can Christian filmmakers find some inspiration from “Faith Based” in how to make great faith-based comedies?
I think they can.
There are two scenes in this film that really stand out in their depth and beauty.
The first is the scene where Tanner and Luke’s journeys are juxtaposed after they have a falling out. We see how much Tanner’s life is improving as he is embracing Christianity and making the effort to put his life together. This is contrasted with Luke, who isn’t putting the effort to get his life together.
It is inspiring as well as truthful. It is truthful because most of us can relate to the experience of how incredible it feels to finally turn your life around, or how lousy it feels to not do it when others are.
The scene also allows us to vicariously experience the joy of someone becoming better by embracing Christianity and putting the work in to be a better person, even in a film that’s very honest about the characters’ flaws. Comedies are typically built around tearing something down, taking something we love and showing how it’s actually very silly.
But most people — Christian or non-Christian — go to movies to be inspired or to cheer for something good. This is why all of the highest grossing films are movies about heroes, gods, princesses or romantic love: because what people want most of all from movies is to worship.
The second scene is when Tanner and Luke talk about their perspectives on faith. Tanner talks about how, even though he’s still skeptical about Christianity, he likes a lot of things in the Christian community — like the community and greater sense of purpose.
Luke responds that he never had a problem with the people of Christianity, it was the religion itself, the guilt, and never being able to be who you truly are. This is a remarkable scene partly because it says things we rarely hear articulated. We rarely here atheists say what they appreciate about faith, and most of the time people make an effort to say they don’t have a problem with Christianity, just Christians. (Seriously, where was this depth of commentary in the rest of the movie?)
But it’s also remarkable because of its level of hospitality. I wrote a piece a while back titled “Where Are All the Great Christian Films?” and one of the things I said was that what Christian films often lacked was a hospitality to people who weren’t Christians, or didn’t fall inside their particular tribe of Christianity. (Of course, this is a problem with secular films too, but that’s a whole other article.)
What this scene does well, and what the movie “Faith Based'' does well overall, is show hospitality to the viewer, whether they are a person of faith or an atheist. If you are a Christian you will feel welcomed because you see a story of someone embracing and growing in their faith. If you are an atheist you have a character of someone learning to grow even though they do not have faith. Both Christians and non-Christians are invited to be a part of this story and therefore have a chance to embrace it. That isn’t to say you can never have a story that takes a hard stand against atheism or Christianity or conservatives or liberals or anyone else — but this principle of inviting as many groups as possible to enjoy and embrace your story is a great one that makes it possible for more people to experience the message you want to share. Which, if you believe your message is worth sharing, you certainly want.
At the end of the day, the reason people want to make films about faith is the same reason they want to make films about anything: they want to make films about the parts of the human experience that matter to them. Barnett is grateful for the opportunity to tell the story he wanted to tell.
“It's a pretty dark time in the world. We got to make a movie with our closest friends before the pandemic hit, and now we get to release something positive into the world at a pretty bleak time,” he said. “That feels great.”
“Faith Based” is available everywhere on Video On Demand.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast The Overthinkers and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.com where he discusses art, culture, faith and art with his fellow overthinkers.