Keeping the Faith

December 10, 2004

Rated: R Runtime: 129 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

‘Keeping the Faith’ is my early “date movie of the year” candidate. If your girlfriend/wife/escort wants to drag you to a movie that *she* will like, then pray it’s this one. Rated purely as a guy movie, it would pretty much suck. As a date movie, however, you’d have to be a total screw-up in order not to “get some” from your date later in the evening and that factor alone will get it a couple extra stars.

Keeping the Faith

The movie starts with Jake (Stiller), Brian (Norton), and Anna (Elfman) meeting and becoming best buddies in grade school. Just before entering high school, however, Anna’s dad gets a job in another city and must uproot his family and move them away. Life goes on, of course, and the boys grow up without their childhood friend.

The career paths of the boys takes a bit of an odd turn, however, and Jake ends up a rabbi and Brian finds himself in the attire of a catholic priest. Re-enter Anna, now quite the successful businesswoman, who declares, “I’m like a plumber, except that I fix leaky corporations.” All seems well but, as you knew it would, sexual tensions fire up pretty quickly.

There’s not much to tell beyond that but, make no mistake about it, it’s got all the elements that chicks really go for in a movie. In the first place, it has likable characters, romance, sexual tension, good deeds, broken hearts, humor, & busybody mothers. A formula like this is almost guaranteed to get any typical female’s motor running quite nicely.

As an added bonus, Jenna teases us and shows enough skin to keep a guy’s interest through most of the movie so you can pretty much count on your own motor to be running afterwards as well.

Unfortunately, the humor in the movie was sub-par, but it did have a couple of prime moments. Most of the time, however, I found myself just staring at the screen while women all around me were giggling.

All-in-all, it’s a goodhearted movie about old friendships and new relationships (yawn) that you just can’t pass it up if you need to take the old lady out for a flick.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 3 Stars, Anne Bancroft, Ben Stiller, Comedy, Edward Norton, Jenna Elfman, R, Theatrical