‘Christian Mingle: The Movie’ and the Magic Jesus Dream Boy

Corbin Bernsen has given us a new romantic comedy: Christian Mingle: The Movie.

I like the premise. There’s a story worth telling in it:

Yes, it’s formulaic, but it’s a romantic comedy — it’s supposed to be formulaic. That’s the beauty of it. Complaining that a rom-com is formulaic is like complaining that all sonnets have the same number of lines. And CMTM offers a (potentially) fun variation of that formula: Girl pretends to be a white evangelical to use white evangelical Christian dating site. Girl meets and falls for white evangelical boy. Girl is torn between showing her genuine affection and hiding her false pretense.

That’s a serviceable dilemma for a rom-com plot. It’s the same little-white-lie dilemma that TV sit-coms have been mining for decades with endless variations (“Mulva?“), and Bernsen’s religious angle via Christian Mingle adds a nice twist. The Christian-Mingle episode of Three’s Company practically writes itself. (Chrissy pretends to be evangelical to meet a guy on the site. Jack, after first lecturing her on her dishonesty, can’t resist doing the same. Hilarity ensues until the final act, in which their increasingly outrageous lies are exposed and the Very Nice People they had tried to deceive walk off arm in arm.)

It’s no coincidence that Corbin Bernsen has spent the past decade working on Psych, a show based on a protagonist perpetually trapped in his own little-white-lie dilemma.

The TV sit-com version of this plot differs from the movie rom-com version, of course. Sit-coms are episodic series, so they can’t end with Happily Ever After. Resolve all the conflicts in a sit-com and there’s no story left to tell next week. So the sit-com version of the little-white-lie story usually instead ends with the protagonist’s comeuppance and their learning an Important Lesson (even though sit-com protagonists never actually seem to learn those lessons lest, again, there be no story left to tell next week).

But movies end at the end, and rom-coms — being coms — end happily.

Alas, it seems Bernsen can’t resist spoiling the happy ending of his romantic comedy with an epic Jesus juke, as described in his studio’s summary of the film:

Gwyneth Hayden is a 30-something marketing executive with a top-notch career, killer wardrobe, dream apartment and great friends. She thinks the only thing missing is a man. In a moment of inspired desperation, she fills out a profile on the dating website ChristianMingle .com hoping to find Mr. Right.  However, Gwyneth’s attempts at impressing her dream guy end in disaster when he calls her out on her “faux faith.” In an honest realization, she sees her superficial life for what it really is, and she’s driven to create a personal relationship with God. In the end, He delivers on the true desires of her heart: “life-changing” love.

Promotional blurbs for movies probably shouldn’t contain the phrase “In the end …” That’s a bit spoiler-ish. (“In the end, it turns out Bruce Willis/William Holden was dead the whole time.” “In the end, Chazz Palminteri is shocked to learn he’s already met Keyser Söze.”)

The studio summary is supposed to describe the premise of the story, not its conclusion, but this one was written to appeal to white evangelical box office, seeking the approval of tribal gatekeepers by assuring them that this rom-com doesn’t just end at the altar, but with an altar call. That’s why the movie’s website has an “endorsements” page listing its gatekeeper imprimaturs — the Dove Foundation, MovieGuide, etc.

The problem here isn’t just that Bernsen seems to be offering a religious bait-and-switch. The larger problem is that his story seems to ignore the give-and-take necessary for a rom-com to work. In this story, Mr. Right is always right, while poor Lacey Chabert is always wrong. She has to change, completely transforming “her superficial life.” But he doesn’t have to change or grow at all.

Romantic comedies are supposed to be about two people coming together — they both have to move toward each other. The set-up for Christian Mingle: The Movie suggests that one side of this couple doesn’t move — that he cannot and should not change because he’s already got all the answers. She pursues him because she’s lonely (and because, the trailer seems to suggest, no woman is complete without getting married). Why does he pursue her?

I haven’t seen this movie yet, of course, but it seems the story isn’t interested in answering that question. And without a compelling answer to that question there’s no way for Jonathan Patrick Moore to play his part well. He’ll be reduced to a Magic Jesus Dream Boy — “a stock character [who] has no discernible inner life, and usually only exists to provide the protagonist some important life lessons.” He would become a plot-device more than a character — the Mr. Perfect who exists only as a reward for Ms. Superficiality once she mends her ways to become Mrs. Perfect herself.

One-sided romantic comedies don’t work. This one looks one-sided, so I doubt it will work.

But, hey, it’s got Stephen Tobolowsky. So there’s that.