Okay Surprise

    For floor worship a week or so ago, I went and saw the movie Courageous. I waited a bit before writing a review on it so the "new movie that didn't suck" euphoria could wear off.
    The long and short of it: It was a pleasant surprise. Yes, the film still felt it had to tell us the message instead of showing us the message and in this film, it seemed even more forced than usual. One might say there are two movies fighting in this movie. The film actually gives us some good metaphors for the importance of fatherhood, but seems to have no confidence in those metaphors because they give us a sermon after each metaphor. But I will say that theses movies seem to be moving in the right direction. There is much more drama in this film instead of cheap preaching so the filmmakers seem to be learning to do more with less. The acting is believable accept for a few parts and while the film breaks the common three-act structure, it seems to work.
     I'd say the films biggest problem came from the fact there was five main characters. Therefore, not enough attention is paid to keeping the characters growth into better fathers natural. And the real problem is, it didn't even have to be that way. They could have easily dropped three of the characters in order to more fully flesh out the others. I mean, two of the men are already good fathers so they give nothing to the message. The next two men have some interesting stories (one fathered a child out of wedlock, another is divorced) but they get all of three minutes in their stories which is a shame because the main character as a result gets shortchanged. The true main character, Adam Mitchell, embodies the more overlooked flaw in fatherhood, being the dad who is there but at the same time isn't. This alone could have carried the movie, but since there were four others, Adam's journey is much too fast and he fixes his dad issues far too easily. I think if it had been just him, the filmmakers could have made his journey more gradual and thus, more believable.

    Flaws aside however, this isn't a bad movie. It has some genuine comedic moments, some great emotional moments, and a truly shocking scene (for them). Since I'm a Christian and agree with most of what's being said, I don't mind as much. I would recommend this to any one who wants to see a movie. Just don't look for artistic film making or you will be disappointed. Just look at it for what it is.