Old Fashioned

Old Fashioned is a faith-based movie that apparently means to position itself as a corrective to the bacchanal raging two doors down in the cineplex. It means to be the anti-Fifty Shades of Grey and, if Fifty Shades of Grey turns out to be a miracle of nuanced and thoughtful cinema, it will have achieved its goal.

Now that's mean, and regular readers probably understand that we aren't usually mean to the little faith-based movies that occasionally pop up like dandelions among the snarling thorns of Hollywood hegemony. In general, we're for people making movies with strong points of view, and we tend to give credit to any film that actually makes itself available to audiences. But so narrow and artless is this little scold that we have to say it: Old Fashioned isn't a very good display of storytelling or of moviemaking, and the auteur behind it -- writer-director-producer-star Rik Swartzwelder -- would have been better served had he farmed out three of those roles.