Facing the Giants

Year: 2006 Rating: PG Overall Evaluation: 7.5 Significance Suppositions Story Style 7.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 10.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG for "some thematic elements." The MPAA stated that the movie was rated as such because it was "heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions." What a joke. There is nothing about this movie that is any more dangerous to people's worldviews than most modern Disney movies which get a "G" rating even when they are decidedly anti-Christian.

Story

The film is a fairly typical football movie - struggling team hits the big time and players learn something along the way. It steals lines from other sports movies, but some are the same lines that everyone else steals to fit the formula. What makes it different is that it is overtly Christian in the sense that most of the characters are believers and it takes place at a Christian High School. The coach is facing loss of his job, the loss of his hair, a childless marriage, a smelly home, and a broken down car. He finally gives it all up to God and attempts to get the team turned around by focusing on glorifying God with their abilities instead of just trying to win games. Not surprisingly for a sports movie, it works. Not surprisingly for a Christian movie, God steps in and fixes everything.

Suppositions

So the film is Christian in its worldview it is also very pop-Christian. People "feeling led" to misquote Bible verses and sappy adolescent versions of repentance contribute to a storyline that will probably not resonate with anyone outside the pop-Christian culture. The picture is that of an idealized Christian life, but it also includes enough snippets of reality that it does not come across as completely contrived. Another thing that makes it different from other typical sport movies is the all-white makeup of the team. Other than the "token black" assistant coach, the Christian team is as white bread as they come. This was brought home even more when the "enemy team" turned out to be about half black. I doubt this was intentionally racist because the black coach is portrayed in a completely positive light, but it was a serious reality gaff.

Significance

The message is somewhat difficult to rate. On the one hand there is the coach, his wife, and the team who all make it quite clear that whatever God decides to do in our lives we must glorify Him. This is stated enough times so as to make it unmistakable. On the other hand, once anyone in the film gives their issue up to the Lord everything turns out golden. So in the end no one really needs to face disappointment with any of God's decisions because they all get what they want (and what we instinctively think they deserve). Of course life is not like this. What we think people deserve is often far better than they really do, and as the book of Job shows, not even then does it always work out the way we think it should. Just as Hollywood romanticizes love to the point where anything less than a fairy tale is disappointing, this candy-coated view of the Christian life (which certainly does not need any support from Christian movies) can lead to falling away if it doesn't come true.

But no one complains when any other sport triumph film ends with an unbelievable victory, and the team makes it absolutely plain that God was behind their amazing victory (or at least that they believe He was). Given this fact, the film simply fails to rise above its basic genre expectations and it does not deserve to be downgraded for that. Films such as these give us hope that our hard work does pay off and that excellence will be rewarded and remembered. And in the end, either in this world or the next, that will be the case.