Christian Mingle (2014)

Christian Mingle: The Movie is so brazenly artificial and inauthentic that it almost begs to be ignored; not reviewed, not analyzed, and not even discussed, just quietly, humbly passed by as other films nudge it out of the limelight and into obscurity. Criticized in the past were films like Jobs and The LEGO Movie, for allegedly being nothing more than product placement for Apple and LEGO, respectively, despite bearing actual story lines, characters, and thematic depth; on the other hand, Christian Mingle: The Movie is a film so deeply-rooted in insincerity, it disrespects its actors by giving them shallow human characters with not a shred of humanity to be found all in the means of promoting an already ubiquitous dating website. Lord have some mercy.

The film focuses on Gwyneth Hayden (Lacey Chabert), a well-off woman who has worked her way to the top of the corporate ladder, and rather showing the more interesting story at hand here - Gwyneth's clear business success in what looks to be a male-dominated feel - we explore her dating life, or lack thereof. Gwyneth fears the clock is ticking faster and faster, as she's approaching middle-age and spends holiday after holiday alone, only meriting a handful of poor, short-term relationships in her life. After catching its cloying and persistent ads on Television, Gwyneth, despite being a non-practicing Christian, with little knowledge of The Bible and the story of Jesus Christ, signs up for the dating website Christian Mingle, where devout Christians can meet like-minded believers and hopefully find happiness on their way to eternal bliss.

In an act contributing to the new era of "click, meet, marry, die, done," so coined by Gwyneth herself, Gwyneth agrees to meet Paul Wood (Jonathan Patrick Moore), a loyal, good-natured Christian man who clings to his beliefs with his clean and equally good-natured family. Gwyneth admires Paul's niceness and genuine charisma, leading her to try and put on a Christian act to fool Paul and his family that she is a practicing Christian. Gwyneth's methods are appallingly, obviously fake, but Paul's vision seems to be too clouded by the glow of his halo to notice. The two carry out a picturesque relationship together, so long as the conversation steers away from anything remotely biblical, or else Gwyneth turns into a babbling, tongue-tied idiot.

It's impossible to appreciate Gwyneth and Paul as people because they never emerge as more than anything but ridiculous, cardboard cutouts for the length of the entire film. Writer/director Corbin Bernsen seems keen on making this film as cloyingly fake as possible, never offering any sort of real conversation between these characters nor allowing them to grow to be more than wooden caricatures programmed to spout perfunctory dialog and unsubtle website promotions. The only thing more miserable than the romanticism in the film is the abundance of corny jokes, which are so painfully unfunny I can't bring myself to reiterate their stupidity in my review. The less said about them, the better.

There's not an ounce of sincerity in the way the dramatic scenes of the film are handed; typical for low-budget, independent Christian films, there's always overly obvious orchestration or explosive Christian rock thrown in to assure you laugh and smile at the right times and cry at the appropriate moments. Christian Mingle functions with the latter, throwing in catchy but terribly overwrought and unsubtle Christian rock ballads that do nothing but make an already fake, insincere film more phony and insincere.

To those who think the love in Christian Mingle: The Movie depicts anything close to the kind of love or passion found in real life, I got news for you, it can barely market a dating website in a believable manner, let alone begin to understand or depict anything in the way of genuine intimacy.

Starring: Lacey Chabert and Jonathan Patrick Moore. Directed by: Corbin Bernsen.