Posted 6:38 PM by Gene

We are not surprised. First, the "Christian" movie: Hollywood should NOT make movies for Christians. Setting aside that this is like Russians making the Chinese a movie in Greek, Christians are precisely what your hard-core movie self-flagellants are not: skeptical. The gospel teaches them cultural separatism, a belief that can at its worst can inspire the megalomania of I---mists but at its best provides guidance and reassurance in an awful world. Moreover they teach us that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, an injunction void in show-biz. An enemy culture condescending to people who detest movies for good reason foreordains box-office disaster.

Now for the second. In the Panglossian world of movie accounting this was a B.O. smash. We've tried, we've mightily TRIED to discern Lydia, the Tattooed Lady; more than most of today's female ac-TORS she has the nominal mark of feminine beauty without its attraction. As for Johnny DEPP!!!!!!!!!!, though we assume from the cri-TICS he is a brilliant ac-TOR from his looks he should star in biker programmers. Moreover both somehow strike us as total bores, however exotic their publicity. Putting them together was like rubbing two sticks in the Mariana Trench. PAUL DRECK will gas tomorrow this proves stars don't work. Sorry, stars can work, but not when they look like Lydia and Johnny.