Film Review: Faith Based

David Koechner as “Butch Savage” in Faith Ba$ed (courtesy photo)

By Lauren Bray

It’s not every day an indie film that hasn’t been released yet gets snared in the crosshairs of Fox News and Breitbart, it’s more like every other day. But two filmmakers used it to their advantage when promoting their film “Faith Ba$ed” at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Their film follows the lives of two friends struggling to find purpose when they discover the market for faith-based filmography is highly lucrative. They then set out to make a low budget film about the first prayer in space for “buckets of cash” and of course, hilarious hijinx ensue. 

It stars Luke Barnett, who also wrote the film, his real-life best friend Tanner Thomason, as well as big-named talent Jason Alexander (Seinfeld), Margaret Cho (general comedy awesomeness), David Koechner (The Office), and Lance Reddick (The Wire).

The film is quite clearly a satire, but since its announcement, a few heavily conservative opinion pieces were published calling it “Christian-bashing” movie even though they had never seen it. The articles received over 10,000 comments so the filmmakers reworked their trailer to include them (see below). With an introduction like that, who wouldn’t want to see the film? 

It’s clear these two are well-versed in comedy, both are Funny or Die regulars, their one-liners persist throughout the film making it an enjoyable escape. For anyone who’s ever stepped foot in one of those “cool Christian churches” with a young live band and pastor with tattoos, they completely nail the parody. 

Faith Based’s absurdity is what it makes it funny, and for anyone else who disagrees, I urge you to pray on it. 

Upcoming Screenings

• Sunday, January 19 at 4:20 p.m., Fiesta 4 Theatre