Thanks for the interesting re-cap review, Ben. I would push the critique a bit further, though. Worse than its wretched boredom, grotesquely bland plot line, and incomparably shallow commentary on Christianity, culture, Reed College and the world in general, this movie sacrifices Miller's own mother.
The whole introduction with his mom having sex with the youth pastor, getting pregnant by him, and all that is fake. "But he made it sound like this was a 'true' memoir...a story about a his own 'real' struggle with faith and life," you might say. We all had good reason to think that, but we've been played, by Miller, who threw his own mother and church under the bus to turn a buck. Ask yourself, even if your mom was "cool" with it, would you back a "true- story" movie that portrayed her to the entire world as a sex-starved idiot if it wasn't true?
This movie will undoubtedly experience an initial explosion of the same kind of interest you might witness if somebody were publicly mocking a handicapped person or punching a child in the back...everyone's attention is certainly grabbed, but you still feel sick to your stomach. After Miller and this movie are exposed for what they both are, malcontent and ignorantly boring, the premature and ill-considered commendations for Blue Like Jazz will shrink out of the limelight, back to where they belong: on the stale, played-out, cliché shelves of whiny charlatans.
For that reason, avoid the trap and save your time, money, and mind. Miller is apparently so amused by his own semi-intellectual babblings that he has made no effort whatsoever to learn about the world that exists beyond his initial, juvenile impressions. Worse, he has through this movie subjected thousands to the horrible void of his unchecked pride. Longing to be accepted, Miller humiliated himself like the desperate boy on the playground who takes on a self-deprecating dare and trashes his own reputation just to get a chuckle from curious onlookers. Suckered in by the promise of fame, and he gathered the cool kids together and started mocking his family, his church, his Savior and himself. All things considered, two hours of doing absolutely nothing will be more profitable to you than exposing yourself to this this heartbreaking absurdity.
