Flicka: OK movie, baaad sermon

When our two older children were little, we devised a way of rating movies. We sized them up as a movie, and as a sermon. That is, we evaluated the entertainment-value on the one hand, and the message, if any, on the other.

So by this standard, for instance, Disney's The Little Mermaid was a good movie (fun, funny), but a bad sermon (disrespect your father, do whatever you want no matter who it hurts and everything will work out fine). By contast, Beauty and the Beast was a good movie (fun, funny, good songs, moving), and a good sermon (love your father, love to read, love is more than attraction to appearance).

For our "Burger Movie" last night, we just watched the 2006 movie Flicka, which Michael Medved so loved and hailed as a "a first-class family film" and "fine and family friendly."

Verdict: well, you read the title.

Flicka is indeed very pretty and well-filmed, and has a likable cast; and the horse herself is really gorgeous. There are some funny lines and well-directed moments of interaction.

But... it is a "fine and family friendly" "first-class family film" only if your definition of such includes depicting a caring, loving, devoted, hardworking father as an object of contempt, disrespect, hatred, and familial conspiracy.

That's right. Right from the start, we're introduced to our "heroine," an undisciplined, selfish, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, ungrateful brat, at a fine school only because of great and many sacrifices on their part (her father leading that effort), completing blowing off a test for which she's been provided the topic in advance. Then she goes home, and immediately begins indulging her every whim, shirking her chores, and treating her father with affectionate contempt.

In fact, everyone treats this poor man with affectionate contempt. After one rebellious outburst from this daughter, the mother comes to talk to her. To reprove her, perhaps? To correct her? No; to comfort her by telling her that she (the wife) hasn't "talked to" her father yet. Then, she is hinting, she'll bring him around to the daughter's will.

Do they always treat him with this affectionate contempt? No. The affectionate veneer drops when the daughter's will is crossed, and she physically beats on her father and tells him that she hates him. Her brother joins in, physically shoves this man and verbally spits in his face. Only the wife remains mostly affectionate, though she tells him at one point that he knows he did the wrong thing "because (he) didn't talk with (her)" (i.e. he knows he always goes wrong if he doesn't okay his decisions with her first).

Does this all get worked out?

Yes... in that the daughter gets her way, the father essentially caves, and they all allow as how he's more or less okay now.

This is not my definition of "family-friendly" — at least not in terms of how God defines "family."

So, it is an okay movie, but an absolutely wretched sermon.