Saved!
written by Michael Urban&Brian Dannelly
directed by BrianDannelly

Rick
written byDanielHandler
directed by CurtissClayton

            There are plenty of easy targets for satire. Many pretty much write themselves out of their own obvious accessibility. If you aren’t sure how I mean, check out Jay Leno’s monologue sometime. Relying on the hilarity a news item achieves on its own terms, many of his jokes require no punch line (not that it stops him from making one). Other “humor” in his nightly address consists of mean-spiritedness. When making fun, it is even easier to be morbid than to actually provide intelligent parody. Danny DeVito knows this better than others (and is shown with his grosses how it fails).
          The brilliance of Daniel Waters’ script for the film Heathers comes with his witty dialogue and nefarious plot as it compliments the subtleties of its satire. It doesn’t feature the familiar contrivances to be just a parody nor is it craven enough to be just a dark comedy. Two commendable films at this year’s South By Southwest Festival were similar enough in their wickedness to evoke that film without coming close to its excellence.

      Saved! deals with the easy and familiar topic of religious conservatism, this time in regards to Christian Youth. Released in perfect conjunction with the explosive success of The Passion of the Christ and the subsequent rising vogue of Jesus Christ, it was fitting to see the movie a day after my trip to a Six Flags which populated with visiting groups wearing t-shirts that said “Jesus Rox My Socks” or “God is Cool”. That isn’t to say that had I still been in Connecticut and spent the day before alone in my room that I would have found it any less amusing.
The script by Michael Urban and Brian Dannelly (who also directed) is never cruel or overly irreligious and it doesn’t distort or exaggerate its subject as much as Kevin Smith’s Dogma. Most of the laughs are had with the common hypocrisies and fervent piety in a way that were it shown to a fundamentalist audience, they might not be offended because the mockery might not even be that apparent. To the rest of the agnostipop filled world, the jokes are funny even before they’re put on screen, so it’s a mostly a matter of senses of humor. Alas there are some great puns and ridiculous situations taken beyond the expected in addition to a cutesy and slightly manic charm akin to movies like But I’m a Cheerleader and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
       The story takes place at a Christian high school where Mary (Jena Malone), Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) and Veronica (Elizabeth Thai) are the most popular girls because of their devout Christ-love and their own popular music group. Yet Mary’s faith falls apart when her boyfriend comes out and is shipped off to a reformatory camp (see But I’m a Cheerleader). It gets even worse when she finds out that she’s pregnant, a result of losing her virginity to save his sexuality. Her single mom (Mary Louise Parker) is unreachable to anyone but the principal, Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan), so Mary falls in with the worst seed possible: Cassandra (Susan Sarandon’s daughter, Eva Amurri) is so rebellious that, though she is Jewish, she was forced into the school by getting kicked out of everywhere else.
        Cassandra also attracts the affections of Roland (Macauley Culkin), the wheel chair bound brother of Hilary Faye, and it is their few scenes together which are least successful. Amurri is far from showing the talents of her mother and Culkin did not age well at all. In contrast to their forced performances, though is the subtle connection between Malone and love interest Patrick Fugit. While Malone has never achieved a physical chemistry on screen with any actor, always playing the independent young woman without need or bother of a boyfriend, she is at least complimentary with her leading boys (Fugit, Gyllenhaal, Christiansen) who seem to be the best guy around for her character despite the fact that no guy is actually good enough. One day she’ll hopefully find her own Humphrey Bogart or Spencer Tracy.
       Mandy Moore, on the other hand, has found her own niche here away from the romantic roles she’s used to, as the bitchy cousin of Kim Walker in Heathers and Rose McGowan in Jawbreaker. A talented actress, she just isn’t that interesting in leading roles but walks perfectly in the shoes of villainy filling them with more than one-dimensional heartlessness. Her Hilary Faye may be selfish but the evidence of her ignorance of that fact and the madness that comes with her own discovery is all more believable than anything played solely out of belligerence.
       Saved! doesn’t bite very hard but its sweetness allows it to be more accessible, and not in a bad way. Like its current adversary, The Passion of the Christ, it presents what we already know and does so with impeccable accordance to the need it fulfills.

        Bill Pullman is often brilliant when appearing in unseen films in which he’s allowed to be his weirdest. Favorites of the past include the eccentric detective of Zero Effect and the unstable father in Igby Goes Down. Now witness his greatest yet: Rick O’Lette, unlikable protagonist of Curtiss Clayton’s distributor-less film Rick, is based upon the title character of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. A fiendishly sad widow with a beautiful teenage daughter named Eve (Agnes Bruckner) and a cushy yet impassable corporate position at New York consulting firm, he enters his downfall when an offended applicant (Sandra Oh) curses him and then Duke, his “Big Boss” (Aaron Stanford) becomes interested in Eve, thinking she’s Rick’s wife. When Buck (Dylan Baker), an old college buddy, shows up with an incredible but risky offer, things get out of control.
          Pullman screams like a girl, laughs to himself like a drunken weasel and slowly delivers the sharp dialogues by Daniel Handler (aka children’s author Lemony Snicket) as if any one of these traits were actually plausible in a real person, no matter how despicable. He and Stanford, who coming a long unrecognizable way from the young boy of Tadpole, give such great performances that regardless of the unpleasantness of their characters and the somber turns the story takes, there is a lot that’s likeable here.
         Despite Clayton’s excuses that distributors won’t touch such an aberrantly dark comedy, there is a place for the film alongside such minor hits as Bad Santa, American Psycho and Election. The problems Rick has, rather, are in its coincidental plot connections and inconsistent pacing, the latter which comes as a big disappointment from the former editor turned director. Lisa Rinzler’s photography also adds her usual drowsy and depressive influence. Every film she works on gives off the feeling like a smoke machine has been running in the auditorium for two hours. Still, as she tends to shoot films with bleak subjects, her craft is right on in its effect.
         I would watch Rick again if it came out in theaters. There are moments that caught me so off guard in their hilarious celerity and it has the inevitable quality of becoming a cult hit through its merry wickedness. Compared with the more colorful Saved!, that film is a lot less fun and a lot more tame.