Ark: "acts of random kindness"

Just Say Noah: Evan Almighty's appalling effort to pander to religious moviegoers

Excerpts:

Evan Almighty, a drab retelling of the Noah story as a comic ecofable, is Hollywood's latest and—with a $200 million budget—most expensive pander at the Christian market. Ever since the success of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, studios have been hurling money at Christian directors in hopes they can recapture that Jesus mojo.
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You might argue that making a comedy about Noah's ark—one of the Bible's grimmest stories—is a bit like making a sex farce about the Rwandan genocide.
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But Evan Almighty also strips away anything Christian (or Jewish) about the story and replaces it with a message of universal hokum. God's entire instruction to his flock? Practice "acts of random kindness." (Look at the initial letters of that phrase.) That's not religion or even morality. It's a coffee mug slogan.
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never thought I'd hear myself say this, but Evan Almighty makes me miss The Passion. It was a sadistic, horrifying movie, about a bloody and terrifying book. But Mel Gibson captured the sense of the story, the ideas of suffering and sacrifice that undergird Christianity.

Comment: What I don't get is why some Christians are falling all over themselves to endorse this film! Salon review: God forbid Steve Carell should keep pouring his comic talents into brain-dead heart-warmers like this