Christians and the Movies

According to statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America, children and teenagers spend more than 1900 hours a year watching movies and television. If they go to church once a week, that means only 52 hours of worship. Dr. Ted Baehr and his monthly publication, MOVIEGUIDE, want to level the Hollywood playing field of influence by getting studio executives to make more family-friendly movies and TV programs with a Christian worldview.

The good news is that since Movieguide started, the number of movies with strong Christian content has increased by a factor of 50.

Actually, it’s good business to make family-friendly movies since those are the ones that take in the largest box office. They’re called four-quadrant movies meaning that young and old, male and female can enjoy them.

Movieguide (the magazine and the website) provide an amazing amount of information on the movies they review. Movies are often very subtle in presenting their anti-Christian bias. These reviews will set you straight on that and a lot more.

The core of each review is a rating of 1) the overall Quality of the movie and 2) its Acceptability for Christians.

The Quality rating is similar to other publications and goes from one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).

The Acceptability rating is something unique. This scale starts at +4 (Exemplary) and goes through +3 (Moral), +2 (Good), and +1 (Worthwhile). From there it descends from -1 (Caution), -2 (Extreme Caution), -3 (Excessive), and -4 (Abhorrent).

Both WALL-E and FIREPROOF got 4 stars for quality and a +4 rating. As you can imagine, this is somewhat rare. The kids’ movie Space Chimps got 2 stars and a +3. HELLBOY 2, HANCOCK (Will Smith), and YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN (Adam Sandler) all got a -3 on the Acceptability scale even though Hellboy 2 and Hancock each got 3 stars for quality. The Batman movie, THE DARK KNIGHT rated 3 stars for quality, but only a -2 on Acceptability.

Most of the ‘usual Hollywood fare’ that comes to our multiplexes week in and week out usually fall in the minus range, including, to my shock and surprise, most of the romantic comedies.

Ratings are given for the level of Language (L), Violence (V), Sex (S), and Nudity (N). So, for example, a single L means few obscenities, LL is several, and LLL means the movie has numerous obscenities and profanities.

The reviews provide information in dozens of other categories including many you might not have even considered. Does the film promote a Humanistic (H) or a Biblical (B) worldview? Is it flat out Anti-Biblical (AB)? There are categories for Patriotic (P), Romantic (Ro), and Anti-Capitalistic (AC) to be used as needed. These reviews tell you if there’s Smoking and Drug Use (D). Alcohol and Drinking (A). Homosexuality (Ho). Paganism (Pa).

Each review explains exactly how these monikers apply and discusses the movie’s salient points the way any other review would.

This is great stuff and wonderful food for thought and discussion, particularly for those of us warriors who hope to engage the culture.