Glory, Glory, Hallelujah - "Saved!" is a Godsend

Yet here is the deliriously entertaining black comedy “Saved!” to prove that thinking all wrong. It is a deliciously droll teenage satire, full of wit and vim and vinegar so tartly scrumptious the bad taste left by big budget monstrosities like “Van Helsing” and “The Day After Tomorrow” almost dissolves into nothingness. Like April’s “Mean Girls,” this is one teenage comedy that remembered to bring a brain. And, just in case that wasn’t enough, this one packs the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, too, for good measure.

Mary (Jena Malone) is one of the “good girls” at American Eagle Christian High School. Entering her senior year, along with best friend Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), she’s not only one with the Lord but she’s also atop the high school social food chain. Everything is right with the world as far as she is concerned; faith is making a comeback, there’s a staunch conservative in the White House and her mother Lillian (Mary-Louise Parker) has started taking an even more active role in local school and church activities.

But things start to sour for Mary when her boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) confesses he thinks he might be gay. Shocked, the young woman makes it her mission to prove to Dean that he really isn’t homosexual, just confused, especially after Jesus appears to her in a vision and asks Mary to, “do everything she can,” to help him. Heeding this message, the 17-year old sleeps with her hunky ice skater boyfriend figuring the gift of her virginity should be more than enough to put Dean back on the path to God.

Oops. Not only does Dean not morph back into a bright and chipper heterosexual male, the bubbly auburn-haired conservative poster child ends up pregnant. Horrified, Mary hides her pregnancy and starts to question everything she once took as gospel, her faith slowly dying on the embers of her fiery skepticism. This new found disbelief does not sit at all well with Hilary Faye and her devoted “disciples” Tia (Heather Matarazzo) and Veronica (Elizabeth Thai) or with befuddled school principal Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan). Suddenly this former “good girl” finds herself on the wrong side of the locker room door, students and teachers alike going out of there way to show her the error to her newfound ways.

Luckily there are still friends to be found at American Eagle. Chief amongst them is social outcast Cassandra (Eva Amurri), a chain smoking Jew Hilary Faye has made it her life’s work to try and convert to Christianity. Then there is Roland (Macaulay Culkin), Hilary Faye’s cynical wheelchair-bound brother whom the blonde dominatrix drags around school and town like a merit badge to prove what a good Christian she is. Finally there is Pastor Skip’s skateboarder son Patrick (Patrick Fugit) just recently enrolled after spending time doing missionary work in Africa. Mary thinks she might be falling for him, but what would a pastor’s son think – no matter how open-minded he seems on the surface – if he were to find out she was pregnant?

What is most remarkable about writer/director Brian Dannelly’s debut feature is how unabashedly religious it is even while taking pot shot after pot shot at the Christian Right Wing. The lengths some of these kids go to in order to prove their unwavering belief is undeniably funny and pointed, while the absurdity of trying to walk a road so straight and narrow not even Job could handle it is handled with deft frankness. Yet, “Saved!” never comes out screaming, “religion is bad!” Instead, it professes a deeper kind of faith, one that free-flows and evolves to accept differing points of view and religious ideals of all shapes and sizes. It is the way religion is supposed to be and yet, especially in this day of increasing intolerance and terrorism, seldom seems to be.

Granted, not everything about the picture is heavenly. The gay boyfriend subplot is handled rather perfunctorily, while a blossoming romance between Skip and Lillian never takes flight. And, much like “Mean Girls,” Dannelly and co-writer Michael Urban run out of ideas well before the movie’s climax, trying to cram far too much action into too little space. Everything is resolved cleanly and with no lose ends as if leaving any of the characters’ fates up in the air was going to be too much for an audience to handle.

Luckily, to rest of the picture works beautifully. Certain moments just sing, most notably an uncomfortable exchange between Mary and Hilary Faye at prayer vigil for Dean. It is a blistering, poignant sequence where each girl’s vacillations come to life, in the latter case for the first time. It is the initial fracture in their formerly close-knit relationship, a harbinger of all the discord that will slowly blossom between the duo as the school year progresses.

The entire cast is excellent. Culkin sheds his “Home Alone” past with a performance of sardonic sincerity that’s ultimately touching, while Amurri saunters through the film with a fiery glow of detached indifference that subtly hides the cracking armor underneath. Malone, a revelation ever since her bravura debut in “Bastard Out of Carolina,” carries the picture with the assured grace of an actress with twice her experience. She has a way with a line that bubbles over with laser-sharp candor, cutting deeply to the marrow of Dannelly and Urban’s salty dialogue with the precision of a world-renowned brain surgeon.

Best of all, however, is pop star Moore. Finally, after surviving a smorgasbord of second rate films like “Chasing Liberty” and “A Walk to Remember,” the young diva has found a role worth its weight in gold. Her Hilary Faye – everyone around her spouting off both her names at all times as if Jesus himself commanded it – is a cheerleader for the Lord with the single-minded sting of a scorpion. There is no identity to the young woman outside her dedication to Jesus, no facet to her personality that can handle too much unadulterated scrutiny. Underneath the manipulations and the steely self-control, however, lay a bevy of insecurities just aching to see the light of day. Moore nails it, traveling a road littered with righteous pompousness, assiduous faith and, finally, disturbingly fractured humanity.