Christmas Movie Churches: Prancer

Prancer (1989)

I love Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, in which two very minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet are put in center stage. There have been Santa books, films, and plays without number which make minor mention of his reindeer. And there is, of course, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But the other eight that pull the sleigh are usually lumped together as a group. This film takes one of the eight, usually interchangeable, reindeer and makes him the hero in 1989’s Prancer.

Okay, Prancer isn’t really the hero of the film. The protagonist is a little girl named Jessica Riggs (Rebecca Harrell Tickell) who lives in the small town of Three Oaks, Michigan. She lives with her widowed father and older brother, and the family is struggling to keep financially afloat. Her father, John (Sam Elliot with his famed mustache), is considering sending Jessica off to live with her Aunt Sarah (Rutanya Alda).

Jessica attends a small school -- one assumes it's a public school. Her class is practicing “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” for the upcoming Christmas pageant. Jessica sings louder and with much more enthusiasm than the other children, and sadly, she's not always in key. Her teacher encourages her to sing more softly. (Jessica’s father mentions that Jessica, "plays Christmas records all year.”)

For reasons that are not really clear, Jessica’s father doesn’t attend the pageant, which focuses on the birth of Jesus, with a traditional nativity scene. It seems that this school is still flying under the radar of the American Civil Liberties Union. We don’t see any attempt to balance the Christmas celebration with a Hannukah celebration (we don’t hear them singing the Dreidel song). But one of the teachers does talk about the magic of the full moon and claims that a full moon on Christmas brings a magical time of peace. So I guess there is an attempt to balance Christianity with New Age nonsense.

Immediately after the pageant, Jessica and her friend are walking home through the snowy town as it's being decorated for Christmas with Santa and reindeer hanging above Main Street. When one of the reindeer (Jessica somehow recognizes it as Prancer) falls onto the street and is smashed. Before long, as the full moon waxes, an injured reindeer appears in Jessica’s barn. Clearly, a kind of sympathetic magic is at work.

Three Oaks United Methodist Church

Jessica takes care of the reindeer but decides against telling her father. She gets the town vet (Abe Vigoda) to care for the reindeer. She begins working for a grouchy hermit, Mrs. MacFarland (Cloris Leachman), to pay for reindeer food. And she asks the local department store Santa (Michael Constantine, yet another TV Land favorite) to send a message to the real Santa Claus that she has Prancer (not since Miracle on 34th Street has anyone really been able to tell the difference between reindeer that aren’t Rudolph.)

But this department store Santa, Mr. Stewart, doesn’t send the letter to Santa. Instead, he takes it to the local newspaper, which -- in an incredible act of journalistic malpractice -- publishes a story about Jessica, using her full name, without interviewing Jessica or talking to her father. It is published as an opinion piece, a spin on the famous “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” editorial, saying there is hope because there are girls like Jessica that still believe in Santa Claus. That newspaper is opening itself up for a huge lawsuit.

I’ll give the pastor of Jessica’s church the benefit of the doubt that he assumed Jessica and her father were fully aware of the newspaper article and had given consent for the story to be written. Otherwise, his decision to read the newspaper story during a worship service, without Jessica’s consent, is almost as irresponsible.

I’m guessing from the briefly seen sign in front of the church building that it’s Methodist (the flame and cross). It seems to be a decent church. We hear the pastor deliver a quite orthodox prayer. As befits the season, the congregation sings “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” but also “How Great Thou Art.” I found it amazing that the congregation was able to sing both songs while holding lit candles with the little cardboard drip protectors. Usually, because it takes time to get all the candles lit, one song is the maximum that can be sung with those little candles. Usually that song is “Silent Night.” And I'm baffled that they use candles for a morning service. Jessica is sent to church with her aunt. (Her dad stays home to read the Sunday newspaper, but not thoroughly enough to get to the editorial about Jessica.)

The pastor concludes this pre-Christmas service by reading the newspaper story about Jessica and her belief in Santa Claus. “Town of Three Oaks is in good hands as long as we have children like Jessica Riggs with their hope and wonder,” he concludes. I’d think you’d want to conclude such a service focussed on Jesus rather than Santa, but that’s me.

But there is something that is very good about this church. Mrs. MacFarland comes to church, apparently inspired by her interaction with Jessica, and many people of the church welcome her with great warmth. This weighs heavily in the Movie Church Steeple Ratings.

So I’m going to leave some of your plot questions unanswered here. “Is that reindeer in Jessica’s barn the real Prancer?” “Does the reindeer rejoin Santa and his sleigh team?” “Is Jessica able to remain with her father?” These questions, I’m sure, will perplex anyone who has ever seen a Christmas film (that is not Bad Santa.)

But to finish up our Movie Churches business, we're giving the church and pastor in Prancer a three out of four steeple rating.

Now In Theaters: I Can Only Imagine

I Can Only Imagine, (2018)
Last month, the big movie business news was the success of Black Panther, which broke box office records and may continue to be the biggest story for the rest of the year. Part of the interest in that story is diversity, a celebration of the primarily black cast and crew making a Marvel action movie. This month, though, the new news story is I Can Only Imagine.

This new film was predicted to make $2 - $5 million on its opening weekend. Instead, it took in $17 million and had Cinemascore rating of A+ with 79% of the audience saying they’d pay to see the film in a theater again. The film even has a “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes, which is a rare thing for a Christian film. Sure, it couldn’t beat Black Panther and Tomb Raider at the box office, but it did beat other big studio productions (A Wrinkle in Time; Game Night; Love, Simon). As for diversity, it presents a Christian message, which -- in Hollywood -- is a diversity of thought that may be even rarer than racial diversity.

People who’ve seen it seem to love the film, which has some interesting and odd elements. It is the first time lead actor J. Michael Finley (as songwriter Bart Millard) has appeared on the screen (he appeared on Broadway in Les Miserables and Hair). It’s hard to decide if it’s odder to see Finley in his late 20’s (guessing) as a high school student or Dennis Quaid (in his mid-sixties) as the father of a ten-year-old. The film also features 91-year-old Cloris Leachman as “Memaw" (she played "Maw Maw" on the sitcom Raising Hope), who provides the name of Millard’s band, Mercy Me, and the inspiration for the title song (by urging Millard at a funeral to “imagine”).

I thought the film was okay. Of course, I think the song is just okay, but with sales of two and a half million copies, “I Can Only Imagine” is the best selling Christian song of all time. It swept the Dove Awards (the Christian Grammys). It also crossed over into the top 40 of the secular contemporary market. For some reason, the song is on the Christmas playlists of many radio stations.

The real Bart with Mercy Me

More importantly, many people have said the film brought them hope and encouragement, bringing them through difficult times in their lives.

But, as you know, this blog isn’t here to examine box office numbers -- or even the quality -- of films. We’re here to rate churches and clergy in film, and while churches and clergy play a small part in I Can Only Imagine, they do come out looking pretty good.

Bart Millard had a very tough childhood. His father was an alcoholic who beat Bart and his mother. His mother abandoned them both when Bart was ten years old, leaving him at the mercy of his belligerent father. Something else very important happened when Bart was ten years old, he went to a Christian summer camp in Texas.

Bart was nervous and scared when he arrived, but he was soon befriended by other campers. He enjoyed the food, scenery, and recreation. He even enjoyed a couple of the best things about summer camp that aren’t found in brochures: getting into trouble and first love.

The camp speaker, a youth pastor named Rusty from Greenville First Baptist Church, effectively communicates God’s love and the need for forgiveness. When he gets back home, Bart attends that church, which is in his hometown.

As Bart grows up, he discovers a talent for singing. The pastor of the Baptist Church asks Bart to sing in church (something viewers hear about, but never see). We see teenaged Bart in a coat and tie headed to church on a Sunday morning. His father asks him to stay for breakfast, but Bart explains he needs to go to church to sing, and he asks his father to come along. When his father says he “doesn’t belong there,” Bart asks him to listen to the church service on the radio, telling him the time and call letters.

We later learn that Bart’s father, Arthur (Quaid), did listen to the radio broadcast, and he kept listening week after week. He starts listening to other Christian radio broadcasts and begins to read the Bible for himself. After Bart leaves to pursue his musical dream, God changes Arthur’s life.

Churches don’t usually have camp or media as their primary ministry, but sometimes they do these things very well, bringing hope to -- among others -- a battered little boy and a lost alcoholic. And that’s why Greenville First Baptist, the church in this film, our highest rating of Four Steeples.