Wednesday, August 11, 2010

To Save a Life? or not?

Lastnight my hubs brought home the movie, "To save a life" for us to preview. If you haven't already seen it I'll give you a quick run down:

{SPOILER ALERT!}

The movie starts at a burial, after a teen boy has killed himself while at school. The stress of life and pain of being unseen, un-noticed, and uncared for was too much. The main character, Jake, observes the suicide just inches away...and the story begins to unfold that Jake and Roger were "once upon a time" best friends. Jake grew up, became a popular high school jock w/ benefits, leaving Roger in the dust. Oh, and throw in there that years prior - Roger saved Jakes' life by pushing him out of the way of a car - and taking the hit himself...destroying his leg forever.


The movie then back tracks to show events leading up to Roger taking his life and just where and how Jake "went astray" with girls (well, one girl), sports, partying and running with the "cool crowd".


In the middle of the movie Jake starts to feel like maybe Roger's death was partially his fault. He did ignore him, like everyone else. At the same time Jake's party boy lifestyle starts to catch up with him - grades failing, girlfriend pregnant, parents divorcing...

Long story short - Jake finds God, or perhaps vice versa, and learns how to really SEE people. He joins forces with Pastor Chris the local youth pastor and starts to pull away from his party crowd and seek those who are forgotten in an effort to save a life - for Roger. At the end of the movie the girlfriend has the baby and they enter an open adoption (good!), Jake continues on to his dream of going to a prized college for basketball, and... the ministry of "Souled Out" continues reaching cutters, drunks, and pot heads.


Here's where I need to voice an opinion.

While the movie DID make a ton of good points, touched some important issues facing teens today {and always} and did a great job at clarifying the difference between religion & relationship with God... the name of Jesus was NOT mentioned once. While the "Christian" teens were very caring, kind and compassionate - they never said why. Kind of weird to me for a Christian movie.


The party scene was very detailed, and, if you have teens who aren't already familiar with that scene... well, you would be ruining their innocence by allowing them to see it. Simply Stated. Everything from beer pong to an alluded "going to the bedroom" scene to a guy puking his guts out in a trash can. Yep. It's vivid and very lifelike. I was actually cringing just remembering my high school days and being at one of those parties... and maybe thats the point. ?? Throw in another scene of a cutter in his room... cutting... {well, it IS fake blood I guess, but still} and its a lot to take in if you don't already know about these things.

I dunno. I see some gain from maybe watching this as a parent or as a group of youth leaders so you can be more "in touch" with what public school kids are experiencing... but, I don't recommend this for everyone and I def wouldn't show this to my youth kids. If they want to watch it with their parents - awesome - but, it was little too much for this girl.

To Save a Life? Good moral ideas... but somehow lacking the name of GOD - and when that happens I feel like maybe the mark was totally missed. ? Thoughts? Have you seen it?

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