I saw Loving The Bad Man back in January, when Family Videos were closing down. My Grandma picked it out, and I had heard about it, so I wanted to check it out. I was repulsed by the movie, but my Grandma, to my amazement, liked it.
Before I review the movie, let me say something controversial: I am pro-life, even in cases of rape. I do not wish for any woman to be raped and impregnated, but it is unfair to kill the child in the matter.
If a store manager was injured by a robber, should the police arrest the robber or the manager?
The robber, of course. If you kill a baby conceived in rape through abortion, it is equivalent to arresting the manager.
For another analogy: Would you kill a 5 year old that was conceived in rape? Then why do it before they are born?
Granted, there may be some gray areas in this matter, such as if the mother is young or suicidal from the pregnancy, but all in all, I am against aborting a child for what the father did.
Actor Kelsey Grammar has a perfect quote for this, which I am sure is meant to be figurative: "If someone has to die as a result of rape, then we should kill the rapist, not the unborn child." That has about the same meaning as my robber/ manager analogy.
If you think my position is disgusting, then let me introduce you to a Christian movie called Loving The Bad Man. The plot follows a Christian girl named Julie, who is raped on a road trip by Mike, a drunk car repairman who just lost his job.
Mike goes to jail, and Julie becomes pregnant. Her parents tell her to get an abortion, but she points out the hypocrisy of them being against abortion but wanting her to get one because she was raped.
She makes the above case that the child doesn't deserve to die for what Mike did, and she keeps the child. The fact that this hypocrisy is pointed out was one of my positives, but the movie then continues.
Julie decides to see Mike in jail on a weekly basis. These visits are not to say "Why did you rape me? How could you do this?", instead she sees him to say hi, show him sonograms of their child, and to eventually fall in LOVE with him!
I kid you not, on one visit, she tells Mike (and I'm possibly paraphrasing): "What you did to me was the best thing that has ever happened to me." I know she meant having their son Arthur was the best thing, but how she worded it was disturbing.
Speaking of disturbing, I remember being so disturbed that I told myself that I might need to see a Saw movie just to cleanse myself from this! (I did not, but that is a recommended remedy.)
Oh, and Mike is an atheist (because atheists are rapists I guess), so Julie gives him a Bible and he becomes a Christian. In an atheist's review on YouTube that I saw, he said, "Can you imagine going to Heaven and saying "Hey, remember when you raped me? Those were good times. Have a good day!"
Anyways, for some reason (my Grandma and I were both confused by this), some of Mike's cellmates want to kill Julie (why is the part that confused us), and Mike says, "If you want to kill her, kill me instead."
Before they do, he writes a letter to her, telling her that he has accepted Jesus as his Savior and that he was going to die for her the way Jesus did. So, there you go ladies and gentlemen, our rapist gains a Savior Complex at the end of the movie.
My Grandma and I had dinner after the movie, and we both discussed the movie, defending our positions on if it was good or bad. I told her that I am pro-life, I told her about Kelsey Grammar's quote, stuff like that. But I summed up my position on the movie in this way:
When I was 14, 8 years ago, I went through a year of child abuse. It took me about 5 years to let go of most of that anger. Julie never had anger. She never yells at Mike, she has no nightmares, she doesn't even CONSIDER the abortion.
Had she considered an abortion for 5 movie minutes, I would have at least seen some humanity in that! I'm not saying that this movie should have been about her aborting Arthur, but it would have been human to at least contemplate it.
My Grandma said: "Well, she got through it because of her faith." I went through my abuse through my faith as well, but it didn't stop me from hurting for half a decade! We continued to debate this, and she still liked it, and I still hated it. Again, I am a pro-life Christian, but this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.
The cinematography is also awful. It has a budget of a little over a million dollars, which is no excuse for how it looks. Rocky had a lower budget and looked far more decent.
Even Flywheel, the first Kendrick Brothers movie, which has a budget of $20,000, has a better film quality. This shows that Christian filmmakers need to work better on their filmmaking skills. 11 years have passed and that is only gradually improving.
There were a few positives that I found, hence why I awarded the movie 3 stars and not 1. Apart from the hypocrisy that Julie points out, I must admit that the story isn't boring. Good? No. But interesting? I have to say yes. I can't deny I had to see where this insane story was going to go. So, it was interesting, but not in the way the filmmakers intended.
Also, Julie's Dad expresses anger to Mike that I was expecting from Julie, so I appreciated that. However, the mood of the movie tries to make it seem like a bad thing.
Despite these few positives, they all drown in how creepy and unrealistic the movie is. To anyone who gave this a 1, I don't blame you. I'm sorry that I try to see the bright side of things.
Loving The Bad Man is an awful movie, Christian or otherwise. I've told friends who love Christian movies about this and even they were horrified at the premise as well. To the people who made it- I don't think this is what Jesus meant when He said: "Love your enemies." Although this is debatably better, this movie made Unplanned look like a masterpiece.
Reverse Recommendation: Apart from being about pro-life, it was also supposed to be about forgiveness. Better Christian movies that deal with this are:
The Passion of the Christ (the ultimate forgiveness).
I Can Only Imagine.
Courageous(part of the plot).
VeggieTales: God Wants Me To Forgive Them?!? Yes, see a VeggieTales video instead of this abomination of a Christian movie!
