Nately, Nova Scotia is the type of small, quirky fictional town that small, quirky Canadian films are set in. All of the residents are religious, so much so that they don't like the new, young minster since his sermons are unorthodox. They especially don't like Casey since she's a very proud non-denominational atheist and she throws this in their faces.
Casey is also the type of character that all these films have: the smart, independent teenage rebel. The somewhat interesting new dimension that Casey has is that she's only a rebel because she's trying to fill the shoes of her tragedy-ridden sister. She's also a caring soul in her heart because she's using her minimum wage job at Krowne Donuts to pay the bills for her grief-stricken father (Callum Keith Rennie).
The fraud part, a nice combination of faith and minimum wage, gets introduced early when Casey throws a cup of coffee at the wall and decides that it looks like Jesus Christ. She uses this to her financial benefit as the many faithful followers are sure to pray wherever they think God is. They go where He goes.
Most of this description makes it sound like a quirky comedy, but "Faith, Fraud, & Minimum Wage" decided to take the drama route as we follow Casey as she sees how her actions affect those around her. I think I would have liked it more as a comedy, but it is still a well written film that we care about the characters.
This is an independent, low budget Canadian film, one that is incredibly lucky to get Callum Keith Rennie since the other unknown actors are generally unknown for a reason. Films like this have very little to use to their advantage, except story. More often than not, for a movie like this to get made, it needs to be original. And oddly enough, that's where "Faith, Fraud, & Minimum Wage" fails. Stories about finding images of Christ on a wall and using that for personal reasons have been done many times before.
Every aspect of this film was done well enough—in particular, the struggles of the young minister were quite effective and Andrew Bush could potentially become a promising actor. Inventive twists and turns to the story never came but it is good enough to keep me interested.
