The Pastor and the Pro

The story of the Pastor and the Pro is much better than the seeming intrigue of the set up. The performances of the main stars are pretty good. Campbell is believable in the role of a working girl trying to tempt a virginal pastor, and Cox plays a convincing single pastor torn between holiness and self righteousness. The extras are cartoonish and the production quality is poor, but the writing is pretty strong. The struggles of the main characters seem real and their responses seem true to the characters. The movie was very funny, but not the farce that the title would suggest. The use of dramatic irony is funny and effective. A couple of the jokes don't land, but I feel that is more an issue of the edit and sound quality than of the writing, acting or directing. All in all, one of the better low budget, faith focused films I have seen.

"Jacob" (Travis Lincoln Cox) is a really nice guy who serves in a church while anxiously waiting to be ordained. Unfortunately, the fact that he is young and single works against him with his superior "Pastor Campbell" (Phillip Keiman) who doesn't quite feel comfortable with him yet. On an entirely different note, however, is the fact that Pastor Campbell's conniving niece "Leah" (Monika Holm) definitely likes Jacob and often tries to use her relationship with her uncle to pressure Jacob into dating her. So when an important Christian leader by the name of "Dr. Callahan" (Andrew Tribolini) accepts an invitation to visit the small church, Jacob is essentially told that in order to be invited he must bring a date-presumably Leah. But rather than bringing her, Jacob decides to ask his neighbor "Rachel" (Kelly Cunningham) to come instead. The problem is that Rachel is a prostitute and she not only wants to be paid but also has one major condition that Jacob has to agree to as well. And this creates all kinds of problems for him. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a cute film which started off rather well but tapered off midway through the picture. Yet even so, both Travis Lincoln Cox and Kelly Cunningham performed quite well and if not for the lackluster ending I would have rated this film slightly higher.

Except how Cunningham rendered the character of Rachael, the rest of the cast could have used a few acting lessons and some better lines from the writers.

However, the actual message of this film was a fairly good demonstration of the grace of God as actally represented in Scripture. Most of the American and British media represent the Chrisitan faith as conservatism, mere moralism, conformity to societal standards or a form of cultural nationalism; either that or a foil for the triumph of iiberal humanism against an oppressive angry, judgemental and/or remote God or rebellion against the hypocracy of the sourrouding impersonal, industrial, oppressive capitalist society disguised as Christianity--anything but a message of the grace of a holy God for those he came to redeem.

This one actually demonstrated what real grace is about on a personal, human level. That's rare. It's not the best script by far, but the idea is close to a fairly accurate representation of what the Cross is about, al least on a pedestrian level.

This film has some amazing things going for it. The performance by Kelly Cunningham is superb, and whilst the rest of the cast is decent as well she definitely carries the fim.

The camera work and film quality are also quite good.

The writing is amazing with clever and entertaining dialogue and interesting characters. I was hooked and laughing most of the way through the movie.

It seems to fall apart late in the third act however where a lot of intricate and clever webs are weaved but the writer didn't really know how to end it.

The final twist in the story seems unnecessary and only serves to leave us with a relatively disappointing conclusion that makes the ending feel extremely rushed and disjointed.

Kelly Cunningham...why is she not busier ? she was wonderful, as was the actress who played Leah (the Pastor's niece.) I read somewhere that this movie cost $11,000to make, so how 'bout y'all bashers on here go make a better one for $11,000...i'll wait.