Also at verveslag.

I was lucky enough to catch a sneak preview of Saved! (also here) this week, and I liked it. I'll admit it — it's a one-joke movie, but it's a damn good joke. It may be unbelievable that something with popstar Mandy Moore and that girl Susan Sarandon begat could be as enjoyable as this, but suspend it.

Saved! follows the senior year of high school for Mary (Jena Malone), a born again Christian, and her dogooder friends. But when Mary's boyfriend (Chad Faust) goes gay, and Mary gets pregnant in a desperate attempt to turn him back, she begins to question everything she grew up believing about God, Jesus, and cigarettes. Outcast by the school's piety queen, Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), she begins running with the wrong crowd of two — Hilary Faye's crippled brother (Macaulay Culkin) and the high school's token Jew (Eva Amurri) — and learns what Jesus would really do . . . crash the prom on His due date, ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend in tow. Saved! also stars Patrick Fugit and Heather Matarazzo.

I was particularly impressed by this movie's handling of the touchy issues about which it dances. People who actually are like the Jesus freak characters in this movie (a friend raised in rural Arkansas assures me "there actually are people like that") will still be offended/confused, but normal, healthy, people who happen to have a religion will find it perfectly safe . . . the movie doesn't condemn religion flat out, only the fundamentalist varieties, which is good news to everyone outside the Bible Belt — Saved! won't alienate Aunt Marge . . . too much.

Sure, some of the people I saw this with thought it was a little lame, and it was — a little. But it's the kind of movie you have to see and like on principle. Or vice versa.