TMS Movie Review: Father Stu

(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)

I’m sure like a lot of other film lovers out there, my main curiosity about Rosalind Ross’ new spiritual drama Father Stu was the R rating. Most transparently Christian themed movies try hard to work the PG angle. Ironically, in what I assume was an attempt to be realistic—especially considering Father Stu’s crude lead character—the adult content actually adds very little to both the story and film’s quality. This biopic on Stuart Long, a man who becomes inspired to join the Catholic priesthood after being down on his luck for years, appears to be a longtime passion project for star and producer Mark Wahlberg. After viewing the movie, I think it’s safe to say Father Stu is definitely the kind of religious picture Wahlberg would make.

In the mid to late 1990s in Montana and California, Stuart (Wahlberg) experiences many paths of life from amateur boxing, to struggling to start an acting career, to customer service, to finally priesthood. He is also cursed with various health crises along the way, such as infections from wounds, a coma after a car crash and premature Lou Gehrig’s disease. Like most gritty character dramas, there are some daddy issues, portrayed here with Stuart’s estranged father Billy (Mel Gibson). Jacki Weaver plays Stuart’s worried mother Kathleen; Teresa Ruiz co-stars as Stuart’s on-again/off-again girlfriend Carmen who influenced him to start going to church; and Cody Fern and Aaron Moten appear as Stuart’s new buddies while they’re all studying to join the Catholic Church.

I get the sense Father Stu is one of those movies where even though one person is credited as the director [in this case Ross], it’s most likely the producer who was actually running the whole show. Wahlberg originally attempted to bring Long’s story to life in 2016 with previous collaborator, writer-director David O. Russell; and it shows in the first half of the movie where we’re reminded of Russell’s The Fighter (2010), which co-starred Wahlberg. I can imagine the actor trying to conceive Father Stu as similar to The Fighter, but with a Christian angle.

(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)

It’s not impossible to make a good movie with a Christian protagonist, even with the ratio in quality suggesting otherwise. I enjoy any time Catholic raised Martin Scorsese tackles the subject whether it’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) or Silence (2016). Episcopal based filmmaker Terrence Malick has channeled Christian spiritualism in his films, most prominently in The Tree of Life (2011). I still regularly view Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 biblical mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth” and any iteration of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice’s 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar every spring. Gibson’s own The Passion of the Christ (2004) is the most financially successful R rated film of all time and his Hacksaw Ridge (2016) did well on the awards circuit.

Yet for some reason, it remains incredibly difficult for Christian based movies to reach general audiences. Wahlberg seems to be a man who takes both filmmaking and his faith seriously, so I can see Father Stu having a lot of potential on paper. Respected names in the cast like Gibson and Weaver, and the effort to make Long’s story feel relatable rather than just preachy. I’ve noticed a lot of reluctancy from viewers to give the film a shot because of both Wahlberg’s and Gibson’s controversial pasts, which I can understand. But eyeing this feature with the ‘separating the art from the artist’ rhetoric, I think Father Stu might still miss the mark a little. The dark ‘realism’ of having Long and his father swear with foul language consistently along with a couple of violent sequences feel more tacked on and forced than natural. The second half of the movie is decent, but also doesn’t really say anything Christians haven’t already seen before on a secular person’s epiphany to find God.

Father Stu isn’t terrible. But if you had asked me, I would have ended Easter season with a revisit of “Jesus of Nazareth” or Jesus Christ Superstar.