Blue Like Jazz (2012)

Sadly Over-hyped

People are voting emotionally.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

A fantastic movie with (unfortunately) no target audience. It deals with some rather adult subjects that don't make it friendly for the average Christian household, and it also won't appeal to non-Christian moviegoers due to some overtly Christian themes. That being said, my wife and I loved the movie. We might not watch it again for several years, but I'll never forget it.This movie is incredibly thought provoking and honest. A moving movie excellent for anyone that doesn't mind a few cussing, drinking, Christian, and sexual references in their movies.

Blue Like Jazz comes out strong, you start and you feel, "this is going to be great", but then it carries on, on weak acting by some of the cast and a very weak script that makes you want to get up and walk away, the movie message is good and it does preach commitment to Christ.The movie message can be easily related to, as a Christian I know of times (when I was new in the faith) that I concealed my identity of being a Christian just to blend in, the movie's message rides on that; it rides on a Christian trying to be part of the world, forgetting that we are but on a pilgrimage in this world and heaven is our final destination.Based on a book of the same name written by Donald Miller, it (the book) is a semi-autobiographical work, and on the cover the book is subtitled "Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality," I happen not to have ready the book, but from the movie I believe it is named such because of the protagonist father's love for Jazz, and the fact that he was the person that pointed the protagonist in the direction where doubt looms.The book and movie plot follows the life of Don, a nineteen-year-old sophomore at a Texas junior college. Don moves to Pacific Northwest, where he learns that being a Christian makes you an outcast, so in order to escape his Biblical background and Biblical way of life, Don does everything possible to make sure he is part of the cool kids, even denying his faith.Before watching I did a little research to know what I am getting in to, some people say the movie is a Christian movie, the director claims that it is not, just a regular movie with religious undertones. I have seen the movie and I wonder how people didn't see it in the same view as the director. Also the movie actually came to being from the contributions put together by fans of the book (and more) from the Kickstarter website. The names of the contributors can be seen at the end of the movie, in the credits.In conclusion, the movie message is great as I said before, but the implementation is just canny the director is trying to cover up a Christian film with a lot of worldly additions just to make the movie look secular. He added controversial things like cursing and homosexuality, knowing that many have different views concerning such. This movie could have been better, but since I have not read the book, I can't ascertain that the story in the movie has strayed from the original, but I can ascertain this though I didn't like this film.www.lagsreviews.com

Blue Like Jazz follows the same formula used by John Moyer in his movies about Mormonism. The questioning believer is critical of his faith but eventually finds meaning in joining a church, usually through his interest in a desirable female believer. See John Moyer's the Returned Missionary. It's basically the same story. In this case, non-believers are depicted by the residents of a secular college as being raucous, injured and without direction. Christians are shown as tolerant, generous and kind. Non-believer's lives are mired in self-absorption, while the Christian character is generously giving her time to traveling to a troubled third world community. What she actually accomplishes there is not revealed. The viewer is left to wonder whether she is giving any substantial relief or is there to proselytize. While the supposed virtues of a Christian life is alluded to, the film never tackles the difficult challenges about historical accuracy and factual evidence put forth by its critics. It simply asserts that non-believers and Christian critics live empty non-fulfilling lives, and Christian's lives are wholesome, peaceful and fulfilling. This is illustrated when the main character comes to his senses, recommits to his religion, and most importantly, gets the girl. The female prize is no ordinary female, but a high quality, highly desirable, attractive, intelligent, caring, wise, and endlessly forgiving white Anglo-Saxon female. This is exactly the prize bait used by Moyer in his movies about the Mormon religion; that is until John Moyer renounced his membership and gave up the religion.

Whether we like it or not, college is an existential odyssey landing us in more uncertain territory than we began. I attended liberal Georgetown University as an already well-trained Catholic boy. I left an agnostic happy in his dilemmas, uncertain as hell about God but ready to spend a life searching for truth and beauty, both of which I found thanks to that Jesuit education.Ratchet up that liberalism to arguably the most liberal college in the US, Reed College in Portland, Oregon, set the movie Blue Like Jazz square in the middle of that progressive world, and you have fertile ground for a young Baptist, Don (Marshall Allman), from conservative East Texas learn about ambiguity and find God in strange places. It's a gentle, counter culture film about secular extremism that actually leads Don to an understanding of religion transcending Christian moms and hypocritical pastors.Blue Like Jazz is successful showing the liberating nature of a college where the average student IQ is 138, classroom discussions pit cultures against each other to find common ground, and one is free to express to the delight and challenge of others. The film fails, however, to provide a coherent point of view because of its passion for discursive episodes not always linked by motif or theme. Just too many eccentrics and not enough time.The defining event of the search for godlessness leading to God is Renn Fayre, the annual selection of a "Pope," meant to be a mockery of exalted Catholicism that turns out to be a growth point in the intellectual journey of freshman Don. He turns out to be not unlike the Graduate's Benjamin, naïve but on his glacial way to enlightenment.Blue Like Jazz is a charming, incoherent coming-of-age film that made me nostalgic for the low-key anarchy of Georgetown, where I may have grown away from the orthodoxy of the Sisters of Saint Joseph in favor of the secular humanism of the Jesuits, but where even I have to admit uncertainty about the existence of God is a pleasant antidote to the uncompromising certainty of the Baltimore Catechism.