God Forbid

The story itself is hard to believe. To think that someone in the public eye is stupid enough to do something that is so sleazy is shocking. Here the Falwell's have this persona of being straight laced ultra religious people, and set high moral standards for students at the university, yet they secretly engage in all sorts of sleazy activities. Disgusting.

As an aside, reading some of the negative reviews by Trump supporters I had to laugh. Many said that the second half of the movie tried to make trump and the republicans look bad. LOL! Trump does a pretty darn good job of that all by himself. Lighten up people.

As "God Forbid" (2022 release; 109 min) opens, we are introduced to Giancarlo Granda, a Cuban-American who comments "If I knew what would've happened, I'd walked away." We then go to "March 12, 2012" and Becki Falwell, wife of Christian evangelican leader Jerry Falwell Jr., picks up a 20 yo pool boy at a Miami hotel. It isn't long before they start a torrid affair, with Jerry Jr. Looking on (literally). At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from longtime director Bill Corben ("537 Votes"). Here he reassesses the turbulent life and times of Jerry Falwell Jr. And his wife Becki as the leaders of Liberty University. The documentary is basically a 2-in-1: on the one side there is the salacious personal hypocrisy of the Falwells in how they practice their "Christian values" or the lack thereof (comments Giancarlo's sister: "They are not the good Christians they portray themselves to be"), and then there is the political fallout from the Christian evangelicans' wholesome embrace of Trump(ism) : in both 2016 and 2020, about 80% of Christian evangelicans voted for Trump, who of course doesn't have an ounce of "Christian values" in his body, the Big Loser and Liar-In-Chief that he was and still is. In the middle of all this is Giancarlo Granda, who was just 20 years old when all of this started a decade ago. I found this documentary to be surprisingly well done.

"God Forbid" started streaming on Hulu earlier this week, and I just caught it last night. If nothing else, watch this as it exposes (again) the utter and sheer hypocrisy of Christian evangelicans who preach one thing and then have no problem supporting a man who literally lies every single day, cares for no-one but No. 1, and then for good measure tried overturning the 2020 presidential election results in every which way, including staging a (failed) insurrection on January 6. But hey, he did appoint 3 justices to the Supreme Court, so it's all good! Of course don't take my word for it, so check out "God Forbid" and draw your own conclusion.

The documentary explained things exactly as it is, yet the truth is deemed biased. Maybe Charlie Kirk called on his many sheep to come here and submit their BS?

Great documentary shedding a ton of light on what happened between this kid and a bunch of hypocrites. During the first 20 minutes, I thought "hey, live and let live." I didn't care what they did behind closed doors. But when it was revealed how twisted their true agenda was and how it impacted literally all of our lives politically, it made me sick. The Amerikan Taliban is thriving thanks to disgusting characters like the Falwells. It explains perfectly how their alleged faith plays third fiddle to power and greed. Their faith actually isn't even on their radar. This goes for all of them, not just the Falwells. They're in it for the money and the power, and nothing else. Gross human beings who will be remembered in history as the charlatans they are. And their supporters will be remembered by their children and grandchildren as nothing more than an embarrassing era in their family histories. We actually deserve this. I guess a society has to dabble in theocracy and fascism before it knows any better. I take comfort in knowing that I'll be able to look my children and grandchildren in the eyes one day and confidently say that I was not one of these idiots.

I thought the documentary was well made and clearly well researched. It exposed not only the hypocrisy of the Falwells, but the white evangelical movement as a whole. I found Granda to be believable and well prepared to support his account of events. He was not innocent, and he admits that freely and in detail, but they ran over him and damn near cost him his life and then Jerry threw his own wife directly under the bus to preserve....what? His godly reputation? I live not far from Falwellville (Liberty) and I don't know anyone who was surprised by this. His alcoholism and lack of character and moral compass were the worst kept secret in Lynchburg. While I believe that what you do in the privacy of your relationship is of no concern if no one is getting hurt (ultimately granda was damaged), when you make your fortune and grab political power by oppressing others you deserve the fall from the grace you pretended to embrace.

Seriously guys, who in gods green earth did the sound mixing for this? They need to be fired and never allowed to work on a film again. The documentary starts with the subject giving an interview with rap blasting in the background at the same volume! It's insanely hard to hear what someone is saying with lyrical rap music playing over it.

I thought that the intro would be the end of it, but unfortunately this continues throughout the entire documentary. It's an ok story, but the aggressively loud "background" music is just way too distracting. Do yourself a favour, watch it on mute and read the subtitles.