Saved!

“Saved!” is very cute, although not a perfect movie.

I liked the sense of humor, and the (mostly) naturalistic cinematography and casting — the girls from “Mean Girls” would look like space aliens here. The kids all looked and acted like kids — even Mandy Moore had a fairly bad haircut by the standards of movie teenagers — although it slipped once or twice (the dialogue about the clinic on the Vespa didn’t sound like kids, but rather a Moral dropped in by the writer).

I didn’t go to a religious school myself, so I can’t speak to how spot-on the characterizations of the students and teachers is, but Hesperia is very religious and I have a lot of interaction with the “Christian community,” and I was certainly nodding in recognition quite a bit at some of the personality types. The humor wasn’t necessarily AT the Christian community — or, if it was, it was the sort of humor of someone laughing at themselves.

And, of course, one of the all-time greatest scenes in a movie is Mandy Moore flinging a Bible at another girl, screeching “I am FILLED with Jesus’ love!”

Good stuff.