Faith, Fraud, & Minimum Wage

A NEW Christmas Story: I liked this movie a lot. Great little story about a religious hoax in a little Canadian town. Some really solid performances anchor a charming equation between a clever young girl, her dad, her boss, and her fella... I enjoyed the Stephen King-esquire villainy of "Uncle Bob"(having done retail in my younger years) and the unpredictability of the rest of the characters - they're painted as "stereotypes" on first glance 'til they speak and act like very real humans. Good writing and good pacing lead you to an ending you can't see coming - just like life. Callum Keith Rennie has become one of my favourite actors(Californication - c'mon..). He plays a man I've met many times ...clinging to old thoughts ...the past, and he is great. Martha MacIssac holds the film together with her Casey McMullen ...a consistent and smart performance, but Ricky Mabe kinda stole the show for me ...a pitch-perfect performance of that sensitive jock - a nice reminder that young or old - everyone stands for something. Andy Bush is really good and Matt Amyotte is hilarious. Do yourself a favour and watch this movie... Show a little faith - it's well worth it.

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.

This film is an example of what goes wrong when a society becomes tolerant of intolerance. It leads to moronic behaviours, institutional abuse, and poor unoriginal film-making passing itself off as something cute and original, because the institutions funding these films need to justify their belief systems.

Sad sad sad.

This could have been a good film, the story's potential was there, if the film-makers had just demonstrated some guts and originality, to step out of the bounds of group think and say something thoughtful. But no, all it had to say was platitudes.

There are days when the anglo-Canadian film industry is just depressing beyond belief, making films for the sheer sake of making a film, without any intent to have any impact in anyone's life.

This is a Christmas movie worth checking out.

I was afraid it was a Hallmark special, but it is anything but. It walks a tight line between skewering Christian hypocrisy and showing that faith can give you strength.

The lead actress and her father were totally believable. Uncle Bob is a genuinely disturbing and all too realistic villain.

Good acting and some interesting visuals. The cameos as the "site of the miracle" were hilarious, and touching. The scene where Uncle Bob shows his true colors followed immediately with the dunk Satan side show attraction made me laugh.

Worth a watch.