tmdb28039023
Written on 8/25/2022
I think Catherine Holt (Erin Bethea) sums up very well whatās wrong with her marriage to Caleb (Kirk Cameron): āYou canāt expect me to work every day and get the groceries while you look at trash on the Internet dreaming about your boat.ā
She has a point, or rather two. According to her, Caleb ātuck[s] away a third of [his] salary saving for a boat we donāt need. [He has] $24,000 in savings when things in our house need fixing."
You canāt argue with that; having a boat is after all a single guy kind of thing to do. I donāt need to tell the movie this ā what with it being a "faith-basedā drama ā, but āNo man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.ā In other words, ye cannot have a wife and a boat.
As for the ātrashā that Caleb is so fond of ā i.e., porn ā, I could see a way to work that into a marriage, but then both parties would have to be on board, and thatās precisely the problem with this movie.
To help him save his marriage, Calebās father John (Harris Malcom) presents him with āThe Love Dare;ā a 40-day program that goes something like this: āDay one: ā¦ For the next day resolve to say nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything ā¦ Day two: ā¦ In addition to saying nothing negative to your spouse today, do at least one unexpected gesture as an act of kindness,ā and so on and so forth (on the 16th day he has to pray for her; in the movieās funniest line, Caleb confesses āI kind of skipped that one.ā This obviously happens before he relents and accepts Jesus Christ into his heart).
Catherine takes her husbandās newfound attentiveness with a grain of salt (her friends advise her that āHeās trying to butter you up for a divorce,ā whatever that means).
Caleb calls his father and complains that āNone of this means anything to her,ā and heās right, but how could it be any other way? How can something she doesnāt even know is going on mean anything to her?
Oddly, when John talks about his experience with the Love Dare, he speaks in plural ā e.g., āThere was a point when we had no hope eitherā ā; unless heās using the royal āWe,ā he means himself and Calebās mother. Caleb, on the other hand, hides the whole thing from Catherine, which a) doesnāt seem like the best way to go about repairing your marriage and b) wouldnāt it work better if it were a two-sided effort? Itās not like sheās completely blameless, either.
And now to give the Devil, or I guess Jesus, his due. Caleb is a firefighter, and he and his crew are called to the scene of a traffic accident. A woman is trapped inside the wrecked vehicle, which in turn is sitting on some tracks right on the path of an oncoming train. They are ācurrently unable to make contact with the train dispatcher,ā so Caleb & Co. have no choice but to manfully push the car out of harmās way.
This is all kinds of great. Not only does it put to shame many a newer, much more expensive film (is it an actual train? Iām not going to go out on a limb that it is, but if itās CGI, then itās the best damn CGI train Iāve ever seen), but it makes me care about the characters because I can believe they truly are firefighters putting their lives on the line ā quite literally, in this case.
Now, if only the movie had been about firefighting instead of a loveless marriage that avoids ending up in divorce thanks to a little mĆ©nage Ć dieu.
