Virag's Movie Reviews: Saved! (2004)

Saved! is a great little movie.  I had never seen it; I'm not much of a consumer of dumb comedies, but little did I know about this flick.  Sure I watched it because of Eva Amurri, but I was quickly taken by the whole thing.  Saved! is the movie Juno could have been if Juno hadn't been insultingly dumb and if Juno hadn't sucked worse than anything had ever sucked before.  Saved! did a great job of portraying people of faith attempting to live their lives with grace and acceptance to the best of their abilities with an amiable shorthand of characterization.  Jena Malone actually sorta looked the part which is a nice change.  Heather Matarazzo, Mary-Louise Parker, and Martin Donovan are all there in the background doing solid work.  Even Macaulay Culkin didn't make you want to slap him silly which is another nice change.  Unlike in Juno, the script was not creepily smarmy or filled with poorly-written characters supposedly too smart to do they idiotic things they did in the movie.  Saved! worked pretty well as a comedy and was not at all dismissive with respect to faith and belief, showing most of the Christians in the film to be decent if sometimes misguided people.  This is a good movie, certainly better than I would have believed it could be.  More like this please, and less inane Junos or heinous Judd Apatow shit.  Thank you.