“Father Stu” could renew some people’s faith in, well, Hollywood’s ability to make a faith-based movie. While clunky in places, it strives hard to amuse skeptics while preaching to believers, and pulls off the minor miracle of sometimes succeeding at both callings.
How can such a thing be explained? Easy. The movie is the passion project of one of the industry’s most successful Catholics, Mark Wahlberg. It is infused with all of the bad-boy charm, distinctively earnest humor and, yes, physicality that the actor brings to his many hit films. There’s even underwear dancing for all the Marky Mark fans still out there.
Wahlberg produced this semi-true tale with some of his own money, and he plays the title role of Stuart Long. An amateur boxer from Montana pushing middle age, Long got a wild hair to head to L.A. and become an actor. While that was a non-starter, the unrealistic, minor-offense-committing yet fundamentally goodhearted atheist faked an interest in Catholicism to impress Carmen (Teresa Ruiz of “Narcos: Mexico”), a devout woman who caught his eye. One coma-inducing motorcycle accident and visitation from the Virgin Mary later, he wound up in seminary.
Not much is known about the late Father Stu. Some priest pals told Wahlberg about him, and writer-director Rosalind Ross got most of her information from his best friend at theology school and his father, Bill, from whom he was estranged until his final years. Wahlberg put on 30 pounds, by the way, to portray Long in late-stage inclusion body myositis, a rare muscle-degenerative disease that ultimately took his life.
What Ross, an Aptos native, came up with is very much a show-business construct, but one Wahlberg seems divinely inspired to play. His foulmouthed, street-shrewd Long disarms clergy and laypeople alike with gruff, questioning logic and a growing sense of purpose. He’s also funny as hell.
“God gave us a sense of humor so we’d use it,” Long tells the ordination naysayers. With more of the anguish that will emerge later in the film, he also blurts out, “The last thing I need is another father to fail for” at his first confession.
Though not raised in the church, Long came to Catholicism with a well-tuned guilt reflex. Stu’s younger brother died at the age of 5, and Stu couldn’t forgive himself for surviving. Ever-angry, self-pitying Bill Long split soon after his son’s death, leaving mom Kathleen to try to guide Stu through his overcompensating delusions of grandeur.
Bill is played by another hard-boiled Hollywood Catholic, the controversial Mel Gibson. It’s a solid performance, even (especially?) when he mouths unforgivable lines like “You’ve had some nutty ideas before, but this is like Hitler asking to join the ADL” in response to Stu announcing his new calling. When even Ross, Gibson’s longtime girlfriend and parenting partner, writes stuff like this for him, you know the guy is never getting out of movie star purgatory. It’s satisfying to see.
The great Australian actress Jacki Weaver plays Kathleen and makes her the evident source of Long’s cockeyed worldview. “Ain’t that the story of your life? Being out of context?” she asks him with one of her better zingers.
And one of the movie’s. On-the-nose spiritual statements are unavoidable in this kind of story, and Ross has barflies and grim elders deliver too many too frequently, often with prepositions left dangling. The film’s theological discourse is pretty elementary; if secular viewers watch, they’ll more likely be inspired by Long’s personal growth than the beliefs he comes to accept.
至少“斯图父”通常是有趣,如此avoiding the sin of omission committed by many movies made to proselytize. It’s just too damn likable to judge harshly.
L“Father Stu”:Drama. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, Jacki Weaver and Teresa Ruiz. Directed by Rosalind Ross. (R. 124 minutes.) In theaters starting Wednesday, April 13.