Fireproof looks and sounds like a proper movie. It’s got actors; it’s lit well and shot on film; the editing is consistent and the sound is audible. The reality is that Fireproof is filmmaking at its most infantile. The acting is atrocious, the music is maudlin, and the cinematography rivals episodes of “Hannah Montana.” Unfortunately, the sub par failing of Fireproof extends beyond the superficial. Fireproof is bad because it offends in the worst possible way—by pretending that the world exists in a vacuum. This is to be expected considering that Sherwood Pictures, the production company backing the film, is a part of Sherwood Baptist Church, a Christian ministry. If Fireproof is to be taken seriously, saving a marriage relies on equal parts superstition, the destruction of PCs and the Internet, the judicious use of a plethora of table condiments—with salt and pepper shakers being the most prominent—and, most importantly, a smug, all-knowing conviction that faith in God and Jesus is more than enough to keep your wife in line and respectful. It’s that last part that’s perhaps most unsettling, but I’ll come to that later.
Screenwriter and director Alex Kendrick, of such notable Christian-themed films as Facing the Giants and Flywheel, attempts a serious look into the inner workings of a failing marriage by using hackneyed parables and religious mysticism as the basis of insight, while at the same time eschewing the reality and complexities of human emotions and behavior. The characters in Fireproof are just as useless and disembodied as the famed, mythical creature known as Yahweh. There’s Caleb Holt, played as a screeching, whiny adolescent jackass by Kirk Cameron, a firefighter who succeeds at saving lives but can’t deal with the inferno that is his marriage to Catherine (Erin Bethea, a former Walt Disney World “entertainer”), a PR rep at the local hospital. Caleb is upset that Catherine doesn’t show him any respect when he’s home. He can’t stand the fact that she doesn’t do all the grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, and dry cleaning. Of course, this is all played for maximum pathos by Cameron, who portrays Caleb as an insufferable brat who violently yells at his wife at just the slightest provocation.
Catherine, not surprisingly, has had enough of Caleb’s selfishness and wants out of the marriage. She spends most of the picture talking with her girlfriends in scenes resembling some of the worst high school plays I’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting through. When not cavorting with her friends, Catherine begins flirting with stone-faced (or perhaps stoned) Dr. Gavin Keller (Perry Revell). The story follows Caleb’s attempts at reconciling his marriage by taking the love dare challenge, a forty day self-help guide written by his father, a newly converted evangelical with nothing to do. The advice in the love dare book is comically trite and obvious, bordering on the delusional. Consider this advice when trying to win back your wife: make her a pot of coffee, beat the shit out of your computer, avoid calling your wife a nagging bitch—even though you really, really want to—buy her some flowers (but don’t pay too much for them), make her dinner, save some people from a burning building, and of course, the raison d’être: accept Christ as your Lord and Savior. The fact that Caleb needs a book and a complete conversion to Christianity to figure out how to be kind and loving to his wife tells us all we need to know about him—he’s a moron.
For the majority of Fireproof, I was hoping and, dare I say, praying, that Catherine would dropkick Caleb and leave that sorry son of a bitch. But because screenwriters Alex and Stephen Kendrick don’t know how to write a strong female character, poor Catherine is left to fend for herself amidst overt sexism and male chauvinism. Catherine is nothing more than a cipher, written as a nagging, doting and easily irritable wife. In fact, the entire female cast in Fireproof gets the same treatment, revealing the inherent sexism so common to this type of ideology. By the time Catherine finally puts her wedding ring back on, I was half hoping she’d transform into a woman with a backbone. Of course that’s not what happens, and why would it, when the main theme of Fireproof is the unyielding faith in an invisible man living in the sky. Why show both sides of a relationship when the female point-of-view is unnecessary, the film seems to suggest. In the end, the film is really only about Caleb’s redemption and conversion into a proselytizing, bible-thumping evangelical. Fireproof gets off on itself by having Caleb reject his vices—Internet popup ads, his dreams of owning a boat, his selfishness—so he can ingratiate himself into two other costly, morally bankrupt endeavors: marriage and religion.
Richard Saad
© Cinephile Magazine, 2009