Two Bad Movies

My lovely bride and I recently rented two movies, both of which were truly awful:

• "Little Miss Sunshine"
• "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby"
  

I ended up walking away from both; Lisa suffered through the entirety of "Sunshine" but gave up on "Talladega Nights." There's an audience for these movies, obviously. From boxofficemojo.com:

• Sunshine - worldwide gross = $86,340,062
• Talladega - worldwide gross = $162,928,632
  

Here's what I didn't like about both movies -- they seem to rely on angry and bitter confrontation as the basis for their humor. That part of my soul that is sensitive to enmity between people screamed out during both movies. In "Sunshine" it was nearly non-stop, and in "Talladega" they even had children screaming ugly sentiments at their grandfather, all in the name of "humor." If there's an appeal to this, it's a base appeal. There was no cleverness to be found; no ultimate redemptive quality to the movie.

Note: a sub-theme of the movie was the usual "don't judge others; any behavior is okay; there is no morality or objective standard by which to measure a person's conduct." In today's Hollywood that's a given. They don't practice what they preach, of course.

The other thing that's clear to me is the producers and writers in Hollywood have decided to take off the gloves when it comes to Christianity. In "Sunshine" the contempt for God and Christianity was seething. Two examples:

1. The disaffected teenage son, deep into Friedrich Nietzsche (of course), wears a t-shirt through several scenes that says "Jesus Was Wrong." There was no reference to the t-shirt at all. They could just as easily have had the kid where a t-shirt that said, "What's the point?" or "Why bother?" I'm sure the inclusion of the "Jesus Was Wrong" t-shirt was an intentional thing; a jab in the eye of Christianity by secularists in Hollywood.
   
2. At one point in the movie the family's VW van is pulled over and the police officer asks to have the trunk open. Out falls a couple of graphic porn magazines, and the officer says: "Oh, I love these things. God bless you." Again, they could have easily dropped the "God bless you" part of that dialogue, but I'm sure their intent was to link God and porn, or at least link porn and those would would invoke God's name.
   

The anti-Christian flavor of "Talladega Nights" was more along the lines of making any Christian a cartoon character. Now I'll admit that "Christians" have brought this on through their general cartoonish ways. The mocking tone of the movie towards all southerners -- the "Bible Belt" of this country and the electoral reason for the outcome of the past two presidential elections -- is obvious, including that region's Christianity.

I realize I'm sensitive to these things.

I need to stop renting movies. I can't recall the last good movie I've seen.