Flywheel

So, every so often, I enjoy watching a REALLY BAD Christian movie. I think part of the reason I enjoy this is because I spent four months too many working at Western Canada's largest distributor of Christian books' warehouse. Anyway, Christian movies (with the exception of veggie tales, which can actually be delightfully witty, and stfu if you think otherwise) have a penchant for being terribly written, and even more poorly acted.

Flywheel, the enthralling tale of a crooked used car salesman turned straight, is no exception.

The movie begins with some epic piano music in the opening credits. It should be noted that this epic piano music DOES NOT STOP AT ALL anywhere throughout the movie. The main character, Jay, has trouble taking his morning shit? You can be damn sure that has its own musical score in soaring piano notes. This is funny enough in itself. What makes the movie even more funny is the fact that it's set in Arkansas, and the actors are all definitely untrained, and most certainly from the south.

Its like if the cast of the Honey Boo Boo show were sort of able to read and sort of act off of a script that had been written by a man who had watched nothing but television preachers and eaten nothing but Chik-fil-a for his entire adult life. Realism abounds as these bible belt idiots fumble through their lines, laugh like wheeeeweeee, make constipated faces and resort to psalms when at a loss for better words (which is frequently). One part did have me laughing out loud, though, and that's when our used car salesman gets his ASS CHEWED by some sassy old black lady and her even older, even blacker mother. That was totally worth it. (Magical African American Friend, anyone?)

The funniest part of this movie, however, is that it was made in 2003, and yet manages to pull itself together with all of the low-budget graininess, bad musical scores, and value-village wardrobe of a B-movie in the 1980's. Now, I don't know how many of my readers have been down south, but the big bible belters do seem to be stuck in the 80's, so , I suppose, realism strikes again. 

Somehow, Flywheel manages to go on in this manner for TWO hours. Don't worry, I was multitasking heavily, so it wasn't two hours of my life wasted. Anyway, its always nice to have the reminder of why I never want to ever get back in the business of selling christian shit again in my life.