The Passion of The Grieco

In honor of Good Friday and Easter, I thought it would be a great time to mock the religion of my birth with an insightful look at the film that reinvigorated Faith and brought an obscure Holocaust-denying sect of Catholicism to light. Oh Mel Gibson, where was your Nazi-loving “don’t go there Diane” father when you were filming that piece of shit Ransom? Anyway, here’s the deal. I haven’t actually seen The Passion of the Christ. I hear there’s like a nine-minute flogging scene, and if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s floggings that last more than say two, three minutes. I also know how it all turns out: Mary Magdalene is buried in the Louvre, right? Now, I’m not usually one to review a film that I haven’t seen, but I think it is OK here. For those of you who have braved this awe-inspiring piece, please correct me if I’m wrong.

The Passion of the Christ
OK. My mom loves Jim Caviezel, the guy who plays Jesus, so she sends me most of the movies he’s in. I’ve checked out Frequency and the very awesome Count of Monte Cristo, as well as some claptrap that he’s in with Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. Anyway, he’s kind of generic but he’s not terrible, so I’m sure he knocks out the Aramaic thing alright. Let’s ignore the acting and all that anyway, and let’s get down to what really matters: the audience. If you remember, people fucking freaked out when this movie opened. Churches booked theaters for the entire day and bussed in blonde children, and the Protestants and the Catholics went on TV together and decided that they could finally be dicks about the same thing, and they said it was a wakeup call for Hollywood and that this film proved that Christians are a viable movie-going audience. Well, no shit. Don’t Christians make up like at least 80% of the fucking population? Who was it that was going to movies before? Just the heathens in NY, LA, and Chicago and the two Jewish guys who live in Nebraska? Yeah, your people are so oppressed and forced to see movies with violence other than flogging, and God forbid your kid might accidentally catch a glimpse of tit up there on the big screen.

So the Christians got all high and mighty for a change and told everybody to see this movie and that it was true to the Bible and the most real portrayal of the Passion ever, or at least I guess since The Oberramagau. Well, let’s take a look at that claim. First of all, the flogging bit is given about two to three lines in the Bible depending on which Gospel you're down with, so I guess even Mel knows you gotta “sex” things up a bit for the people. He is of course the man who made Braveheart, one of the most gratuitously violent, hook-in-the-balls movies I’ve ever seen. Second of all, Batshit Gibson based much of his work for The Passion on a book written by a Nun that many believe was insane and drew her conclusions not from the Bible or the Lord but from some crazy dude named Gene that liked to whisper in her ear. Alright, I don’t really know if his name was Gene. Third of all, I believe (let’s remember that I haven’t seen this thing) that there is a “Satan” figure that lurks in the shadows and has bugs or rodents or reptiles or some other lower beasts crawling around him at all times. Come on, that shit’s not in the Bible. Sure Lucifer makes that bold appearance in the desert and unleashes some truly metal type stuff in "Revelation," but he’s not like some villain in a Spiderman comic. Fourth of all, what the fuck? Seriously. I have no problem with making a movie about Jesus. I mean, God knows it beats a lot of the crap out there, and I do love happy endings. But people just acted like it was gonna change the world and film and all that, and it’s just the work of this guy who used to be kind of funny when he would play crazy but is now not so funny that he’s actually crazy. One good thing did come out of it, though. Left Behind III: World at War got a bigger budget on the heels of The Passion, so that’s cool. Anyway, sorry I took it down a notch today. I’ll get back to reviewing movies that matter next week. Oh, I’ll give The Passion 1-Grieco, but if you pray real hard you can turn that into enough Griecos to feed the entire crowd.