Review of Christian Mingle

I spent the whole movie trying to figure out if this movie was an intentional parody of Christians or a movie that would have a Christian message at the end. I decided that it very well may be a parody, possibly a parody of Christian movies. That surprises me given the people who are supposed to be Christians associated with the film. I will say it avoided foul language (note the use of "dung" late in the film). The characters who were supposed to play as Christians seemed to be self-righteous, judgmental and hypocritical with the exception of Paul and maybe Pam. On the mission trip, the Americans did very little that was beneficial long term for the town, and there was one scene where they were supposedly working, but it seemed pretty obvious that they were only moving things (mostly tires) around. Christians were expected to quote or recognize verses that aren't well known by memory for a lot of actual Christians. Gwen spent most of her Bible reading in the Old Testament which is not where you find the clearest explanations of the Christian message. In fact, through the whole movie, I was waiting for the central Christian message and it only appeared once in a voice over by Gwen and if you "blinked" you missed it. At one point, someone (I think Pam) says to Gwen "you have a lot of work to do" which is the opposite of the Christian message. *Spoilers* Gwen's "drift-wood" moment happened quickly, but almost invisibly - it wasn't totally clear how it happened. All of a sudden she was a teacher in Mexico and next thing you know Paul shows up. In this sense, the movie really seemed to end up being like a Hallmark romance movie rather than a message movie. Other than Chabert and a couple of other actors, the "acting" was shallow and bad. Even Chabert had some poor moments as far as acting. So take this movie in whatever way you think is appropriate, but personally, I think the movie was schizophrenic - I don't even think it knew what it was. If you watched it as solely a romance movie, and ignored anything other than that, it might be worth 5 or 6 stars. There was some comedy with the attempts to market the hair-growth pills.