The technical quality is pretty good. Acting is good. Editing is good. Even the story is good. You could call it a very inspirational film. A white wealthy family opens their hearts and home to a black teenager from a bad neighborhood. Their care and love help him triumph over his past, and become a football star. It's a good story of a teenager whose past did not prevent him from striving for a better life. And the story is a good example of Christian compassion.
But to call this movie Christian, just because the mother of the family wears a cross the whole time, and the coach of a Christian school mentions a Christian wall of compassion... I wouldn't do that. As you begin watching the film, you could immediately see who's the head of the family, the mother; a running theme with Hollywood films. But suppose we overlooked that. In real life, there are different situations. Sometimes, husbands are whimps, and their wives have to take over the lead of the family. In this movie's family, it seemed like the wife was a really strong character, and the husband chose to not wrack havoc by trying to be too controlling. But as you continue to watch, and you listen to some of the expressions in the movie, you go, "Whoa, that's not very Christian!" The mother (the one who wears a cross all the time) could really use some strong language to show people where they belong.
50 years ago, a secular film would have cleaner lyrics than this Christian film. This is what we want to stay away from. We don't want an industry full of Christian films that misguide people. A lecture by one of the Christiano brothers at the San Antonio Christian Film Festival came to my mind when I was watching this film. One of the points he made was that just because a film has a Bible verse in it, doesn't mean it's Christian. If we produce Christian films, we want to make sure they are indeed Christian. In particular, try to ensure the language and underlying ideas are acceptable to the Christian ideals.
