For five years, filmmakers have been trying to copy the surprise success of Facing the Giants, a football film produced by a church in Georgia. And often with the same hook: sports.

Just in the last year we’ve seen “inspirational” films about golf ( Seven Days in Utopia ), basketball ( Breaking the Press ), mixed martial arts ( Warrior ) and yes, football ( The Fifth Quarter ). What’s missing? Right: baseball, the national pastime.

TomTheHand via Wikimedia

Touching that base is A Mile in His Shoes, based on the book The Legend of Mickey Tussler by Frank Nappi. It’s about minor-league baseball. And faith. And team spirit. And the “differently abled.” And country. Lots of country. If you don’t like tractors, country music and miles of farmland, zip past the first several minutes.

Finally we get to the River Rats in rural Ohio, a stereotyped team of losers with no way to go but up. Coach Arthur “Murph” Murphy’s manager tells him to recruit a good pitcher, or else.

In Indiana, Murph finds Mickey, a simple-minded farmboy with a golden arm: To feed his pigs, he busts up apples by throwing them into a hanging bushel basket — in the same spot every time. Murph begs Mickey’s domineering, overprotective dad to let him try out for the Rats.

The father at first says no: Mickey has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism-like condition that hampers social skills. Finally Dad relents on the urging of his wife and son.

The naïve Mickey progresses slowly, with the help of Murph and a team buddy. And once he gets on the pitcher’s mound, he starts throwing strikes with machinelike precision. The Rats climb out of the cellar toward a league championship.

So who wouldn’t like the new pitcher? The one he bumped, of course. “Lefty” first sneers and plays tricks on Mickey. Then he has his girlfriend get Mickey alone so a couple of masked thugs can beat him up. Mickey is so traumatized, he sits out a few games.

Murph lets him stay at his house for awhile, and it becomes clear why he’s taken so much to him: His own dead son was a baseball player. He even lets Mickey stay in the boy’s bedroom.

Several things happen quickly. Police sniff around Lefty as the main suspect. His girlfriend confesses guilty feelings to her pastor, who urges her to do the right thing. And Mickey decides to face his fears and return to the pitcher’s mound.

And that’s pretty much where this film peaks. From then on, you pretty much know what’ll happen. Unless you guessed it when Murph first met Mickey.

Not that A Mile in His Shoes lacks redeeming values. References to God and the Bible are slipped gently into the plot, not forcibly as in many gospel films. And the girl’s pastor is portrayed as a supportive person, rather than a hypocrite or out-of-touch clod.

Director-writer William Dear is on sure footing with a baseball film, having done 1994′s Angels in the Outfield and 2007′s The Sandlot: Heading Home.

Toronto-born Dear even manages to make us think we’re in rural America when the farm scenes were shot in rural British Columbia. Much of the cast is Canadian as well: Even the theme song came from Nova Scotia-born George Canyon, who also plays Mickey’s father.

Canadian-American actor Luke Schroder, son of veteran Rick Schroder, refreshingly portrays the shyness, literal mind and obsession with detail of Asperger’s patients, without lapsing into caricature.

The main American in this movie is Dean Cain, best as Superman in the early ’90s series Lois & Clark. Cain does a decent turn as the good-hearted coach who is trying to shield his team, and especially Mickey, from his all-business manager.

So there’s a lot of good in A Mile in His Shoes. I just wish “inspirational” filmmakers would try some other genre than sports. Imitation may be the sincerest form of television, as Fred Allen said decades ago. But it doesn’t make the most creative movies.

Oh, yeah: The film’s publicist says FTC guidelines require me to add this . . .

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

. . . which strikes me as kind of lame. Who would recommend something he didn’t think was good?

James D. Davis

Fire melts and purifies gold, as the Bible tells us. So it was with Father Josemaria Escriva, the quiet but earnest priest who grew up during its brutal Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. But this film about him is less than pure.

Escriva, who was declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2002, founded the controversial organization Opus Dei. You may recall that a branch of Opus Dei was Dan Brown’s chosen villain in his book and movie “The Da Vinci Code.” Well, there really is an Opus Dei, and “There Be Dragons” shows its founder as a slender, gentle, almost impossibly good man who is yet troubled by feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy for God’s work.

The film actually takes the viewpoint not of Escriva himself, but of a journalist, Robert Torres, who is researching his life. That’s just as well. Not many of us can identify with a saint.

Robert has hit a dilemma: For some crucial details, he must travel to a hospital in Spain and visit Manolo, his dying father — with whom he hasn’t been on speaking terms in decades. Once there, Robert finds his father has a tape on his life waiting for his son.

We flash back to a Spanish village, with wooden wagons and horseless carriages signaling that this is the early 20th century. Manolo reveals that he and Josemaria grew up in the same town — Josemaria in a poor family, Manolo in a rich one. Manolo follows his harsh, callous father into a business career, while Josemaria hears the call of the priesthood.

The two grow into their vocations: Manolo turns selfish and materialistic, but Josemaria walks around in holey shoes in order to buy a hat for an old lady. “I choose to live in the real world,” Manolo snarks at his boyhood friend. Josemaria, undaunted, forms his lay group, whose name is Latin for “The Work of God.”

Indeed, the Church isn’t the safest employer in Spain at the time, when mobs of revolutionaries are killing priests on the streets. The Spanish Civil War is approaching, a clash of Fascists and Communists that historians see as a dress rehearsal for World War II.

Josemaria’s Opus Dei followers shift him from hideout to hideout, then plan to smuggle him out of Spain altogether. In an asylum, he is shaken when a girl asks why God would allow her to be raped. He is also troubled at the thought of deserting people in Madrid who depended on him.

For his part, Manolo poses as a Communist guerrilla while spying for the Fascists. He struggles with his own doubts — and jealousy — as he sees the idealism of a commander and his lover, a beautiful female fighter.

Yes, the childhood friends meet again in a strange way, just as Josemaria is about to escape over the Pyrenees Mountains. And in a verbal epilog, the dying Manolo drops a bomb on his won: revealing Robert’s own part in the story.

Vivid production values make There Be Dragons consuming in its realism. You can almost feel the roughness of the stone buildings and smell the sharpness of gunpowder. The battle scenes — clanking tanks, dive-bombing planes, guerrillas firing from behind sandbags — capture the panic and chaos of a war that killed as many as 600,000 people.

Scenes in Manolo’s office and an insane asylum are shot in stark, contrasty light and shadow, perhaps to show the battle of spiritual light and darkness. Director-writer Robert Joffe — who also made The Mission and The Killing Fields — made good use of his $36 million budget.

The script is a little more problematic. There’s an obvious subplot of a failed father who wants forgiveness and reconciliation, a frequent theme in recent movies. But telling a story about a man learning a story from his father — puts us twice removed from Escriva, the purported subject.

More important, There Be Dragons says nothing of recent criticisms of Opus Dei: its alleged secret ways, rightist politics and dictatorial control over members. Defenders and journalists have answered these, but they should have been mentioned in this film. If you can flash back, you can also flash forward.

After all, the battle is not just light against darkness. As Paul says in the New Testament, it’s also about avoiding “the appearance of evil.” It’s been a long time since Father Escriva had to be hidden. His modern followers — and filmmakers like Joffe — would do well not to hide anything else about the organization the saint founded.

James D. Davis

Using physical conflict as a symbol of inner battles is as old as the Bible, which says the patriarch Jacob wrestled an angel. But in Warrior the conflict is so brutal and in-your-face — as you’d expect in a film dealing with mixed martial arts — that its themes of redemption and forgiveness are in danger of being overwhelmed.

The story revolves around two brothers and their father: why they hate him and each other, and how they resolve their anger.

Brendan's wife tries to convince him to stay out of mixed martial arts fighting in 'The Warrior.' (Courtesy Bender/Helper Impact)

The fight scenes are ferociously realistic, benefiting from UFC champions Nate “The Great” Marquardt and Anthony “Rumble” Johnson in the cage, plus Rashad Evans as a sports commentator. Fighters punch, body-slam and throw Muy Thai kicks. More than one actor came away with bruises and worse during the filming.

But for a martial-arts movie, Warrior starts out really, really slow. Brendan gets a visit from father Paddy (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic. Paddy asks forgiveness for deserting his family for the bottle, but Brendan tells him to stay away from himself, his wife and his children.

Brendan also has more pressing matters: His teaching job isn’t paying the bills, and the bank is weeks from foreclosing. He decides to return to his MMA career and grudgingly asks his dad to train him. Then he then gets mad all over again when he learns Paddy is already training his ex-Marine younger brother, Tommy.

Brendan gets another trainer and surprises everyone: He has a knack for getting beat up, then winning suddenly with a well-timed arm bar or leg lock. But his wife begs him to stop before he gets hurt or killed. Brendan waves her off, saying that it’s down to fighting or losing the house.

Meanwhile, brother Tommy is tearing through opponents, typically knocking them cold with a single blow. Fellow Marines show up at his matches and cheer him on.

What drives his fury are three things. He resents Brendan for choosing family life instead of following him into the military. Tommy also shares Brendan’s contempt for their father. And, as it develops, he’s hiding some shame of his own.

There’s a subplot about a big, scary Russian fighter (think Drago from Rocky IV), but by then the climax is clearly looming: a faceoff between the brothers. That makes for an interesting question. Both are the good guys. Who will win the match? Who should?

The story has obvious echoes of Raging Bull and Cinderella Man as well as Rocky. The main difference, besides the MMA angle, is how the cage fights and family fights affect each other — and what it means to win the latter. Warrior deserved more attention at the boxoffice; it was probably overshadowed by The Fighter, which came out nine months earlier.

For some reason, most of the main actors in Warrior are sci-fi and fantasy veterans. Joel Edgerton (Brendan) is fresh from the remake of The Thing; Tom Hardy (Tommy), from 2010′s Inception. Playing Brendan’s wife is Jennifer Morrison, late of Star Trek and currently in TV’s Once Upon a Time. She does a surprisingly good job in a minor role: smooth, natural, underplayed.

For his part, Nolte is a longtime respected actor, but it’s no stretch for him to play a jowly, blubbering former drunk.

Spiritual issues? Well, Brendan speaks bitterly about how Paddy deserted him and Tommy and their mother. He also has to find a way to reconcile with his brother and calm Tommy’s rage.

But it’s a thin premise for a “spiritual” film where no one prays, meditates, attends church, reads any holy book, consults a guru or clergyman, or mentions Jesus except in contempt. That’s the unspoken conflict in Warrior: between spirit and flesh.

James D. Davis

Luke lines up a shot as a tournament crowd watches. (Courtesy Lovell/Fairchild Communications)

DVD review: Seven Days in Utopia. 100 minutes. Rated G.

For 2011, we saw a rash of religious-spiritual sports films: basketball in Breaking the Press, football in The Fifth Quarter and Everything in Between. We now pick up a golf club with Seven Days in Utopia, somehow combining the sport with country, cowboys and cute girls. OK, just one cute girl.

Still, the the film is well done for its type. It has some decent acting, fair to very good production qualities, and a realistic lesson about making life more than the living you make.

The opening scene sets the mood: a man silhouetted in the sun, taking swing after swing. The mood is intent, focused, to the point of obsession.

Luke is a promising young golfer who hones his whole life toward winning on the green. But under pressure to perform — plus the strained relationship with his overbearing caddie father — he cracks at the worst time: during an important tournament. He snaps his club, throws it into a water hazard and drives off.

Out in the country, he crashes and has to stay in Utopia, a rundown but friendly little Texas town, while the car is repaired. He’s befriended by elderly Johnny, played by Robert Duvall with the same folksy grace he lent to 1983′s Tender Mercies.

Turns out Johnny is an old pro himself, with his own golf course, though no one else seems to play there. He mentors Luke with some unorthodox golfing lessons, like painting and fly fishing. He also shares his troubled past, for which he’s still paying.

Luke and Sarah watch fireworks, but don’t make any, in this G-rated movie. (Courtesy Lovell/Fairchild Communications)

Luke’s other lessons come off the golf course, as he finds his place among the other Utopians. One of them is Sarah, a pretty redhead played by Deborah Ann Woll, previously a guest actor on The Mentalist and My Name is Earl. Sarah chats with Luke as they sit on bales of hay, though they don’t take a roll in it; this movie well earns its G rating. But their relationship helps convince him that there’s more to life than putting.

But there’s business to finish. Luke has to reconcile with his father somehow. He has to get into another tournament, while preventing his fears and the game itself from consuming him. And he must face down a champion golfer and sink a crucial putt.

Visually, Seven Days in Utopia is often beautiful. Director Mathew Dean Russell, a veteran of films like 2006′s Night at the Museum, captures the faded but engaging charm of the real-life town of Utopia, Texas. And he occasionally shines: In one shot, the camera follows the arc of a golf ball — not merely tracking it, but appearing to fly behind it.

The film is also an honest-to-God look at golf, not just a gospel tract with a thin sports overlay. Luke is played by Lucas Black, not only an actor but a scratch golfer. The champ and Luke’s nemesis is played by K.J. Choi, a Korean-born PGA pro. Director Russell even recruited some Golf Channel reporters for cameos.

Spoiler alert: We never do find out if Luke makes the putt, which is kind of a cheat. The film ends with an invitation to visit a website, didhemaketheputt.com. The answer is unexpectedly obvious, yet matters less than the spiritual issues raised in the film.

If you like Seven Days in Utopia, you can actually buy some Utopia merchandise. The Links of Utopia golf course has its own website, which hawks a lot of film memorabilia — especially caps, towels and ball markers with the film’s slogan, “See, Feel, Trust.”

Here’s the film’s website.

The creator of VeggieTales is back, this time with big puppets instead of CGI fruits and vegetables. And for Christmas, they’re going to tell you, well, about Christmas.

Phil Vischer with his puppets from "Buck Denver Asks ... Why Do We Call It Christmas?"

Buck Denver Asks, Why Do We Call It Christmas? gives a nice, brisk walkthrough of December traditions — everything from the tree to the date to the color of Santa’s suit. Unfortunately, the show does more talkin’ than walkin’. More on that later.

The video is the latest work of Phil Vischer, creator of Big Idea Productions and its lamented VeggieTales. That company went bankrupt and was sold to a conglomerate. Vischer then put together a new company, Jellyfish Labs.

Jellyfish last year began its well-received What’s in the Bible DVD series, with friendly though pompous newspuppet Buck Denver as the main character. Buck is back for Christmas, with a host of friends, all voiced by the multi-talented Vischer.

For some reason, he gives the characters exaggerated accents. There’s an explorer with a British accent. There’s a cowboy with a Texas drawl. There’s a pirate with a Scottish burr. There’s even a monkey with an Asian Indian accent.

They’re all trying to get to a house in Indiana for a Christmas party. Unfortunately, each is delayed by a mishap, like a broken-down wagon or car. Except for the pirate, whose ship mistakenly drops him off in India instead of Indiana.

During their travels, they noodle over various Yule trappings. They trace the American Santa Claus to the Dutch Sinterklaas, then back to his original form, the fourth-century Bishop Nicholas of Myra. The Christmas tree, they say, came from the Great Oak of Thor, a “made-up god.”

The format makes the show necessarily short on action, long on talk, which was the same flaw of VeggieTales. In this one, they try to compensate with vignettes dreamed up by the puppet characters. Some of those are cute/funny, like a picket line of Norsemen with signs like “I (heart) Thor.” Will the net effect hold kids’ attention? Maybe. Vischer’s company says VeggieTales sold 50 million copies, and What’s in the Bible? has sold 170,000 units so far.

The video is refreshingly ecumenical (unless, maybe, you’re a Germanic pagan). The puppets point out that Christmas comes from “Christ Mass,” without any anti-Catholic tinge. That’s not only good theology; it’s good business for the 77 million potential customers who are Catholic.

For adults, there’s the blooper reel among the extras, with the puppets flubbing their lines. My favorite is when one says “Jesus Claus,” then runs with it: “My contract has a Jesus Claus. I get off work for the Second Coming.”

As a kids’ introduction to Christmas, Buck Denver Asks, Why Do We Call It Christmas? does the job. Don’t expect it to become a classic like, say, Miracle on 34th Street. But it may just help your kids to see the many facets of Christmas with new eyes.

James D. Davis

Strength, faith, courage, romance and the Wild West just seem to go together. But in Love Begins, it’s not blind faith as much as bland faith.

This film is a prequel to Janette Oke’s eight-book Love Comes Softly series, though it’s part of the Hallmark series based on them. It pretty much fits the pattern of Oke’s less-than-Wild West, where nearly everyone says “ma’am” and “sir” and sticks to a firm code of honor. And where fine, upstanding women always get their man.

Good-lookin’ Ellen (Julie Mond of General Hospital) and kid sister Cassie (Abigail Mavity of Summerland) work hard to maintain the dusty ranch their dead parents left behind. They smile and talk hopefully, but they’re losing ground.

Meanwhile, over the hill gallop Clark (Wes Brown of True Blood) and his buddy Daniel, on their way to join the gold rush in California. In the town of Trinity, Daniel hits on the womenfolk, and he and Clark get in a brawl with the menfolk, busting up Miss Millie’s café (not a saloon; in this version of the West, no one drinks anything stronger than coffee).

The two men are arrested, but Daniel escapes, leaving Clark to work off the cost of repairs. For the sheriff, the obvious solution is to make him a hired hand at Ellen’s ranch.

This arrangement doesn’t sit well with her: She’s still bitter over Jake, her former lover. Like Clark, he left for the gold rush two years ago. She agrees to hire Clark but treats him coldly.

Gradually, her attitude softens as Clark shows a polite, hard-working nature. His tall, rawbowned frame, shy smile and bright blue eyes don’t hurt either. And the annoyingly perky Cassie helps him work and chats him up.

A few dinners, a gentle dance, and Clark and Ellen confess their love. As he pays the last of his debt, he reconsiders his plans to leave. But oh, no, a plot twist! A well-dressed Jake steps off the next stagecoach! Turns out he struck it rich in California after all. He asks for Ellen’s hand and offers to take her and Cassie to his fine house in San Francisco.

What’s an upstanding frontierswoman to do? Will she sell the ranch and run off with newly rich Jake? Will she stay behind with poor but hardworking Clark? Will she listen to her heart or . . .

Aw, c’mon, everyone knows what she’ll do. Fact is, very little in this story is a surprise. OK, maybe the return of Jake, but that’s about it.

Nancy McKeon’s Millie does little to liven the movie, despite her acting credit as tough-talking Jo in The Facts of Life. Jere Burns, currently playing sleazy blackmailer Anson in Burn Notice, does a decent job as the stern but fair-minded sheriff.

Faith is a quiet undercurrent in this film. Ellen and others attend church and drop God’s name now and then (never Jesus’ name, though). But is it a strong faith? How would we know? Our heroines show little doubt or anxiety. They ask why God would allow a thunderstorm to loosen the barn doors. But they never shout or cry. They never worry about keeping the ranch. They don’t even break a sweat lifting lumber in the hot sun.

This isn’t the biblical model. In the scriptures, Jacob literally wrestles with God; Elijah runs and hides after Jezebel threatens him; even Jesus begs for his life in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Yes, we get it. Oke wants to give her audience something solid, strengthening, faith-building. And without the sex and violence that infects most other entertainment.

It’s a good goal, but it misses some crucial steps. Faith grows stronger only through conflict, hardship, opposition. You suffer; you doubt; you resolve and endure; you grow in faith. What you don’t gain is blandness.

James D. Davis

Everything in Between, which premiered Nov. 11 on ESPN2, is like a big donut: lots of material with a hole in the middle. It has a lot on the process of getting into the NFL. It has much on training, management, politics, business, even broadcasting. But surprisingly little on the young man in the middle of it all.

Tebow, of course, is the star player from the University of Florida who won an armload of awards before even leaving college, like the Heisman Trophy, NCAA Quarterback of the Year, and the Associated Press Player of the Year.

He’s also known for kneeling and praying even during a game, a practice that’s become known as Tebowing. And he’s the guy who paints “John 3:16″ on his eyeblack. The documentary has him talking about Jesus to assemblies, but doesn’t major on it.

What it does show is how someone can be a hero in college, but get knocked down a few pegs when he tries to crack pro football. He goes out for Senior Bowl but doesn’t impress sports scouts. He gets criticism from sports commentators on his low, looping pass, a drawback he tries mightly to make up for.

It’s amazing to see how many decisions are thrust onto this young man. First he and his family negotiate for an agent. Then he and the agent scout several training facilities around the country. Then Tebow undergoes a grueling regimen — running, passing, hot baths, ice baths and more — for more than 10 hours a day. And he has to wade through oceans of adoring fans, like young girls who squeal just to touch him. And all he wants to do is play football.

Director Chase Heavener keeps the production lean and businesslike, seldom even adding music. His choice of camera is light yet steady, seldom jerky. He gets onto the field, follows Tebow around reception halls, sits in on decision making with his agent and family. He goes to the Tebow ranch near Jacksonville, Fla., where the young quarterback chats with his parents and tosses the ball with his brother.

What don’t we get? Much about Tim Tebow. And that’s a sizable hole in this film. After all, the end isn’t terribly suspenseful for anyone who follows Tebow or the NFL: He gets picked for the Denver Broncos. How did he get through all this? Pretty smoothly, if we’re to believe this film.

He does say it’s an honor and a responsibility for so many fans to be rooting for him. And he voices a little frustration for winning so many college trophies, yet getting dissed on sports shows. But does he have any doubts? Any nerves whether he’ll be chosen for a team? He shows none.

When did Tebow show a skill for football? How did he know he wanted to make it his life’s work? Did he ever consider any other career? What good does it do to put a Bible verse on his eyeblack? These are all standard questions for a sports profile. Their lack leaves a hole.

Everything in Between may well find buyers among sports fans who want to know the guts of the training and selection process for new players. Perhaps even for Christians who are proud of a sports champ who hasn’t left his spiritual roots. For the rest of us, the film lacks something: a real understanding of its main character.

For those who want to buy it, here’s the website for the film company.

James D. Davis

Cameras pan through majestic cathedrals; Hispanic children smile and sing; Africans dance in procession and Europeans pace reverently with lighted candles in Catholicism.  The 10-parter fills both the eye and the mind, but not always successfully.

Produced by Word On Fire of Skokie, Ill., the documentary does as good a job as any in recent memory, in showing both the sweep and nuance of the Roman Catholic Church. An obvious motive is to balance the numerous news stories about priests accused of molestation. But Catholicism also introduces viewers to theology and social teachings of the church. Unfortunately, it doesn’t dwell a lot on the believers.

Cover image for "Catholicism," both the book and the video.

Host for the show is Word On Fire founder Father Robert E. Barron, who leads us on a travelogue across several continents. We see not only the usual St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, but also the Cathedral of St. John Lateran there. We also see historic churches in Cologne, Germany, Guadalupe, Mexico, Jerusalem and elsewhere. And we see worshipers in places like Kolkata, Kampala, Lourdes and Sao Paulo. It’s a good illustration of how the church is indeed catholic, or universal.

The good priest explains various concepts, like the existence of God, the liturgy, the reason for worship, and how the Church can be called the “Body of Christ.” I especially liked how he calls for peaceful dialogue. “I think we’ve forgotten how to have a good religious argument that’s not just bland toleration [or] killing each other,” he says.

And yes, he deals with the molestation crisis, confessing that the perpetrators were sinners (how could he say otherwise?). “To say that the Church is holy is not to deny for a minute that it’s filled with sinners,” he says. “But none of this gainsays that the church is . . . a bearer of grace.”

Barron is a good host. He comes off as earnest, engaging, enthusiastic. He gestures with huge hands and speaks conversationally, rather than professorially. It’s a welcome change from the rednecks or ramrods that infect so many TV shows on religion.

So, here’s the church, here’s the people, but what do they say? Very little in this miniseries: Barron is the only talking head. The show mainly forms a set of backdrops for his talks. So many beautiful men, women and children are seen throughout Catholicism. What does the faith mean to them? Some short interviews would have added much to the program.

To its credit, Catholicism is a program that other people besides Catholics could enjoy. The color and polish showcase the beauty that Barron and Word On Fire see in the Church. But part of that beauty is in the people themselves. They should have been allowed to play a bigger part in it.

Perhaps the reason is that the film is meant to be part of a catechesis, or instruction, for adults. It has a companion book of the same title, also by Barron.

Word On Fire also has several materials based on the documentary: study guides, workbooks, even prayer cards for evangelization. They’re promoted on its own site.

James D. Davis

Ever since the success of the football film Facing the Giants in 2006, many producers have been trying to catch the eye of that newly found niche, the churchgoing, moviegoing public. This year we’ve already seen Soul Surfer (surfing) and The 5th Quarter (more football) — and now it’s the turn of Breaking the Press.

This newest film is a retelling of the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, in a context of high school basketball. It’s done with some success, thanks to decent acting and believable cinematography. But because of its heavy-handed spirituality, it may not get much beyond the church audience.

Brothers Josh and Matt Conaghey are friendly enemies and competitors on the basketball court at their small town high school in Texas. Unfortunately for Matt, Josh is a hotdog with a knack for grabbing and dunking the ball. It both helps and hurts that their loving, Bible-quoting dad, Joe, is also the coach.

Josh transfers to a larger high school in Dallas for a chance at the big time. Away from Dad’s influence — he’s staying with an relative — he falls in immediately with an outrageously stereotyped li’l vamp. “His Delilah,” the narrator says. She gets him drinking and partying and foolin’ around every night.

His grades slip, his on-court performance falters, and he’s expelled from school. Too proud to return home in shame, he hits the streets, working odd jobs and sleeping in alleys.

Finally he comes to his senses and loudly repents in an over-wrought night scene on the steps of a church. He comes home, literally to his father’s arms. Matt, though, may be another matter. In Josh’s absence, he has grown into the team leader. Why take back a wannabe star who has been thinking only of himself?

Breaking the Press does a better job of showing the actual sport than The 5th Quarter did. That film showed very brief clips. This one gets into the strategy (hinted in the title itself), told by coaches, players and sports announcers. The games are shot via multiple angles — from the bleachers, a balcony, overhead, even on court among the players — capturing the excitement and nimbleness of basketball.

Trivia alert: Catch a glimpse of a horror movie on TV in the Conaghey household. It’s the 2004 flick Curse of the Komodo — which starred William Langlois, one of the screenplay writers for Breaking the Press.

Although the filmmakers said they wanted to keep from being preachy, the characters toss off God words an awful lot. Granted, it’s refreshing to hear “Jesus” in a movie as something besides a swear word. But it still seems they’re trying too hard to wedge the gospel stuff in.

Josh, played by Tom Maden, comes off as hard-headed yet naïve. He wants his way and his future, but clearly can’t handle the temptations that freedom offers him. I guess that’s true to the prodigal in the parable.

The meatier role falls to Chad Halbrook, as older brother Matt. Having felt overshadowed all his life by the talented Josh, he finally comes into his own after his brother transfers — only to face him again as he returns.

Drew Waters, a veteran of the TV series Friday Night Lights, is a credible coach and father, by turns showing leadership, tough love and self-doubt. Farah White, a Paula Abdul lookalike, is his relentlessly sweet and supportive wife.

The film makes a bit of the fact that both sons are adopted. The element was apparently to make a point of the evangelical Christian belief that when you place your faith in Jesus, God “adopts” you as his child. That’s made clear in a study guide that comes with the DVD version of the film. Oddly, though, it isn’t developed much in the film itself.

Straight documentary? Mitt Romney campaign video? One of those excruciatingly polite commercials for Mormonism? A Mormon President seems to be a hybrid of all three. And more: A look into how Mormons think.

Released directly on video, the documentary scans the life and struggles of Joseph Smith, the charismatic and controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It honestly though sympathetically examines the doctrines that set it apart from other churches. And it praises presidential candidate Mitt Romney, well, to the heavens.

Joseph Smith figure holding a copy of the Book of Mormon, Temple Square, Salt Lake City. (Photo by Ricardo 630 via Wikimedia)

As the video points out, Romney has by no means been the only Mormon presidential candidate. He’s matched by his contemporary Jon Huntsman and was preceded by his father, George Romney, in 1968, then by Morris Udall, Orrin Hatch — and even by Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church.

The documentary then segues into a rather drawn-out account of Smith’s life and ministry, starting with his alleged visit from God and Jesus and his writing of the Book of Mormon. The story is illustrated with some tame sequences of his rise and fall. We also see a lot of those portraits of Smith with half-smile and annoyingly large, liquid eyes, rather like traditional European paintings of Jesus.

Smith is treated as a man before his time, advocating things like smaller government and “gradual emancipation,” freeing slaves by small steps over several years rather than all at once. The video, however, omits the fact that the LDS church didn’t allow blacks to become priests until 1978. That’s exceedingly gradual.

The video has a general Mormon flavor to it, with staid historical re-enactments and a lot of gushy praise of Smith from believers. However, producer Adam Christing is actually a former member of the breakaway Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He even allows commentary from anti-Mormon missionaries, although Mormons usually get the last word.

The bio portion, though, is forthright on the beliefs and deeds that scared Smith’s contemporaries — and make people today leery, rightly or wrongly, of anyone who follows his church.

Smith condoned plural marriage (although the church has since dropped the practice), wedding perhaps 33 women — some in their teens, some in their 60s. He thought Independence, Mo., would become the new Jerusalem. He said there were many deities — both gods and goddesses — and every human had the chance to become one. Mormons defend and soften these beliefs onscreen, but they don’t deny them.

Smith also raised his own army, strutted in uniform and literally saber rattled. He not only ran for president, but had his secret Council of Fifty crowned him king of the nation even as his campaign was starting. And he sent a gang to bust up the printing press of his former right-hand man, William Law, who had become a bitter critic — and founded the rival Reformed Church.

Smith himself became a victim of a mob when he was shot and fell from an upper-story window. Although he declined to mobilize his private army, he is not painted as a mild-mannered martyr: He went down fighting, pistol in hand.

Here’s where Mitt Romney comes in: The documentary compares Smith’s enemies with the “right-wing evangelicals” who want to “derail” Romney’s campaign. Through remarks by people inside and outside the church, the video throws doubt on his chances for the White House. This is presented as a pity: As a Mormon church member says — very late in the video — the United States Constitution bans any “religious test for public office.”

Perhaps Mormons are happy just to use the 2012 presidential campaign as a kind of teaching moment. As the video quotes Romney at the end, “I believe in my Mormon faith, and I endeavor to live by it . . . Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they’re right, so be it.” Whether Romney wins or loses, Mormons have a chance to spread their beliefs.

The “Mormon President” website has an interesting blog, with some background on the documentary and other items. One is a picture of death masks of Smith and his brother, Hyrum; both were killed in the same shootout. Another discusses similarities and differences among the 200 to 400 offshoots of the LDS Church. And not to get too far afield, another discusses whether Republicans are “ready” for a Mormon president.

There’s also a link to an external website that has a lot of portraits of Smith, including what may be two photos of the man.