What Rhymes with Reason (Roberts, 2023)
One of the biggest red flags I look for when approached to cover an “inspirational” or “Christian” film is a marketing campaign that calls on Christians to recruit viewers. Reminiscent of the days of Billy Graham Crusades (or, even earlier, of revival meetings), this strategy of relying on your core audience to bring a friend or ten implicitly concedes that the content isn’t likely to draw a large audience on its own.
After The Passion of the Christ showed that some Christians who didn’t regularly attend movies in the theater would make an exception for content they deemed worthy, the invite strategy became that much more common in marketing campaigns. It wasn’t just about inviting non-Christians to a movie in hopes of an evangelical conversation, it also became about inviting Christians to “send Hollywood a message” by speaking with their pocketbooks.
My screener of What Rhymes with Reason began with a plea from the production team to take ten teens to this event screening about a group of teenagers dealing with suicide, depression, and family trauma. If I can make a concession to this normally irksome practice, it is that the film that follows might not seem totally insipid to the demographic they are trying to guilt parents into coercing into the seats. It’s been nearly forty years since I was a Christian teenager (and even then I wasn’t one embedded in the Evangelical subculture), but my observation of this demographic today is that they are already painfully aware of mental health issues and already wrestling with the expectations of a community that sometimes values projecting a winsome image to “the world” more than being genuinely healthy and happy.
The plot, such as it is, involves a road trip to the countryside in search of a cabin that may have a map that will allow the group to see a meteor shower or find a treasure or bond around campfires with the sorts of earnest confessional monologues that movie teens are so very, very good at. At one point the film name-checks The Goonies, and while this sort of aspirational comparison normally induces eye-rolling, here it at least indicates a youth generation that is aware of, and has engaged with, non-Christian-specific cultural artifacts. (I might argue that Stand By Me would be a better point of reference since The Goonies skews younger and is more of a fantasy adventure.)
My favorite scene in What Rhymes with Reason unfolds when the group stops a prayer to complain that one member is filming for a video log. Discussion ensues about whether this is inappropriate. “That’s the lamest prayer I’ve ever heard … and I’m Catholic!”It’s not exactly side-splitting, Monty Python stuff, but at least there is an attempt at something other than Sunday School lessons parrotted by stock characters.
Where does that leave us as far as a recommendation? I don’t think this is going to get any traction as a movie. As a safe alternative to R-rated fair at the next church group youth shut-in? Sure, I guess. Honestly, though, maybe just ask your kid about what she’s reading…about the movies he’s watching. Nearly all the research I’ve seen about media violence and kids has suggested that having an adult to help them process what they are receiving is far more effective than curating content for them. What Rhymes with Reason isn’t bad, it’s just part of a cultural attitude toward arts and entertainment that feels a bit out of date.
What Rhymes with Reason will be released in selected theaters on October 10, 2023, through Fathom Events.
