With movies like Warrior and Machine Gun Preacher hogging all the attention around the Christian blogosphere right now, it would be easy to overlook some of the really low budget religious themed offerings popping up on the festival circuits right now. For instance, there’s Kevin Smith’s Red State which, truth be told, just sounds too stupid to even talk about. But there’s also Todd Rohal's The Catechism Cataclysm, which creeps into limited release on October 19th and VOD one week later. I have to admit, the title sounds promising, but with a theme song entitled “GOD WILL F*** YOU UP”, I’ve got my doubts.
Basically, The Catechism Cataclysm tells the tale of the world’s most infantile priest who, after being forcefully sent on leave, tracks down the loser he used to idolize in high school and convinces him to go on a canoe trip. Buddy comedy mayhem ensues for awhile until two Japanese girls named Tom and Huck show up with their mute pal Jim and things start to go really, really weird.
Look, I like priest comedies as much as the next Catholic. Even some of the ones that are purposely antagonistic towards my religion, like Father Ted, can have some funny moments. So I don’t want to dismiss this movie right away. But when you’ve got folks like Steven Rea from the Philadelphia Inquirer saying things like “It seems hopelessly without a point - unless the point has something to do with dropping a Bible into a dirty toilet.” and Leslie Stonebraker of the New York Press musing that “rather than use this premise as a set up for bible satire, the film relies on diarrhea jokes and uninspired buddy-bonding to carry us through an ill-plotted tale of damnation and redemption” then, well… let’s just say I’m not optimistic. Oh well, at least Bless Me Father is streaming on Netflix.
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