As "Soul Surfer" demonstrates, "faith-based" movies are a boom industry. Do they have to be so lame?
By Andrew O'Hehir
When a star teenage surfer named Bethany Hamilton lost her left arm in a 2003 shark attack, and then got back on her surfboard just three weeks later, you could hear another species of shark -- the ones from Hollywood, who turn dramatic real-life events into movies -- swimming to the scene. Not only did Hamilton's story have an attractive and charismatic central character, it also came with a moral message attached and (to think more cynically) a much-desired target demographic. Hamilton's family were evangelical Christians who understood what had happened to Bethany as a personal and providential test of faith, and also saw it as an opportunity to testify to the wider world...[continued]
