Ben Davies | Through the Shattered Lens

The 2012 film, New Hope, is narrated by Michael Evans (Samuel Davis).

Michael is a seventeen year-old preacher’s kid whose father, Alex (Will Schwab), has just gotten a job in the small town of New Hope. As a result, Michael has to move in the middle of his senior year. (Yikes, not fun!) He’s not happy about that and, to make things even worse, Michael’s father has talked the high school basketball coach, Tom Miller (Reg Rob), into putting Michael on the team.

(Is it normal for coaches to put someone on a team without having them first try out? The basketball team is in the playoffs, after all.)

Michael tries to explain to Coach Miller that he’s not that good of a basketball player. Coach Miller replies that he doesn’t really care whether or not Michael is a good player. Instead, he wants Michael on the team so that Michael can be a role model for the younger players. Coach Miller assumes that, as a preacher’s kid, Michael will automatically be a good influence.

Uhmm …. has the coach ever met any preacher’s kids before?

Seriously, I live in Texas and, when I was growing up, my family moved all over the Southwest. I have known a lot of preacher’s kids and, for the most part, almost all of them were wild. Even the ones who were religious and planning on going into the family business were wild. When you’re a teenager, your natural instinct is to rebel against whatever it is that your parents are about and, as a result, preacher’s kids usually have a lot to rebel against. There’s a reason why everyone automatically understands what that Sweet Talkin’ Son Of A Preacher Man song is about.

And even if Michael isn’t wild (and, because this is a faith-based film, Michael is a surprisingly well-behaved high school student), how is it fair to tell anyone that they have to be a role model for a bunch of people that they barely know? Michael’s only been a student at his new school for a day.

Michael quickly finds himself in conflict with the team’s star player, Lucas Green (Ben Davies, giving the closest thing that the film has to a good performance). Lucas’s brother also played for the team until he committed suicide. Lucas, with his unresolved issues of anger, feels that Michael tying to take his brother’s place. Lucas gets even angrier when Michael starts to date his dead brother’s girlfriend, Jasmine (Perry Frost). Meanwhile, Michael’s parents get upset when they discover a condom wrapper in his jacket. Oh, you silly parents! Michael isn’t a typical preacher’s kid. The only reason he took the condom out of the wrapper was so he could throw it away.

(Seriously, Lucas seems more like a preacher’s kid than Michael.)

There’s a whole genre of faith-based films that use sports as a metaphor for having faith and not questioning authority figures and New Hope is definitely a part of that genre. Michael has no real desire to be on the basketball team but both his father and his coach want him on the team so Michael goes with it. It’s hard not to feel that Michael really needs to stand up for himself. The film is all a bit too long (the film clocks in at over two hours) and unrealistic. It’s a film that tries to tackle all of the important issues of growing up but it does so in far too ham-fisted a manner. Personally, I think Michael should have quit the team, bought a beret and a pack of Clove cigarettes, and taken a creative writing class. He would have been much happier and no one would have expected him to be a role model. There’s nothing wrong with trying different things and making your own decisions. There’s nothing wrong with being a rebel. That’s what being a teenager is supposed to be all about.

The 2015 film, Uncommon, opens with narration from Marc Garcia (Erik Estrada), a high school maintence worker. Marc tells us that he’s seen a lot at his school. He’s seen many changes. He’s watched as school has gone from a home away from home to a frightening place where students come to class carrying bullet-proof backpacks. He wonders what has caused the change in school. He suggests that it all started in 1962, when the Supreme Court ruled the school prayer was a violation of the separation of church and state….

And let’s just stop right there.

On the one hand, I do think that, for a growing number of people, there’s a feeling that their life has no purpose and that their existence is empty and meaningless. Some people would say that’s because our increasingly online world has left people unsure of how to relate to one another and express their emotions. Some people would say that’s because of the decline of religion. Some would say that’s because society is obsessed with fame. Regardless of the reason, when you feel that your life has no purpose, it is undoubtedly a lot easier to justify doing things that, in the past, would have been unthinkable.

That said, when it comes to prayer in public, state-funded schools, the Supreme Court made absolutely the right and the Constitutional decision. Separation of church and state is one of the most important amendments to be found in the Constitution. Not only does it prevent the State from telling you what to believe, it also prevents the State from ordering you what not to believe. If you think the government has a tendency toward being authoritarian now, just imagine what it would be like if they could claim that they were passing the laws of God.

Believe it or not, this is relevant to the film because Uncommon is all about the separation of church and state. As you may have already guessed, the film’s opinion is the opposite of mine.

Uncommon does open strongly, with Aaron (Ben Davies) helplessly watching as a gunman shoots up his school. His brother dies in the shooting and Aaron transfers to another high school. While attending church, Aaron meets and befriend Mike Garcia. Mike recruits Aaron and his friend, Drew (Wesley Elder), to volunteer at the local assisted living facility.

Meanwhile, at Aaron’s new school, budget cuts have led the principal to announcing that there is no more money to fund the Drama Department or the choir. The drama kids freak out, especially Hailey (Courtney Buck). Hailey was counting on getting a theater scholarship to college but how is that going to happen without a theater department!? Eventually, Hailey and the theater kid come up with a clever idea. They’ll start a drama club and just put on a show themselves! But they have to find a faculty sponsor and all of the teachers are busy. Hey, how about Mike Garcia? Mike agrees, on the condition that the drama club also help out at the assistant living facility.

Meanwhile, Aaron wants to start a bible study group. Mr. Stevens (Don Brooks), the atheist social studies teacher, throws a fit and announces that the school cannot sponsor a bible study group. To be honest, it seems like the easy solution would be for Aaron to just do his bible study group off school grounds but whatever.

Anyway, Mike introduces Aaron to the Drama kids and Aaron agrees to write their school play, which is based on stories from the Bible and…. well, you can see where this is going, right? Again, Mr. Stevens throws a fit. The school board announces that the school cannot sponsor a religious play. Mike somehow knows a lawyer who files a lawsuit on the behalf of the drama club. Somehow, the drama kids win their lawsuit and they perform their show. We only see the first musical number, in which the kids sing that “You got to have faith,” which would seem to prove that Mr. Stevens was right about the show being intended to push religion on the audience.

When people talk about preachy religious films that beat their audience over the head with their message, they’re talking about films like Uncommon. Uncommon is a very earnest film but, in the end, it’s mostly just a case of wish fulfillment. Despite the fact that there’s no way that the drama club should have been allowed to put on their show at the high school, they were. Why? Because this film wanted them to be able to. But, in the end, Mr. Stevens was right. Mr. Stevens was obnoxious and hateful but, when he said that a public school can’t put on a show that promotes one religion over another, he was absolutely correct.

Beyond the film’s theological and legal arguments, Uncommon is also a poorly-acted film that is full of corny humor. The drama kids are so overdramatic. The old people are so quirky. It gets old pretty quickly. Erik Estrada was a lot more fun when he was starring in Guns.