Why the change of heart on my end to decide to walk into the theater and see it on a Monday afternoon? Well, that's a building list of reasons. It started with the fact that this got an R rating from the MPAA, which really threw me for a loop. Pure Flix doing an R rated movie? That sounds about as weird as Disney owning Deadpool. Then there was a lot of buzz leading up to the release with a lot of stations refusing to advertising this movie, despite Pure Flix trying their best to get the word out. They were willing to pay, but stations wouldn't bite, so they had to turn to more unconventional and creative ways to get the word out. Whatever they did, it worked. This past weekend "Unplanned" made a surprising top five debut at the box office, earning a total of $6.3 million. For context, out of Pure Flix's 17 movies they've released since they started distributing these films in 2015, "Unplanned" is their second highest opening weekend, behind only the $7.6 million of "God's Not Dead 2." Most of their movies open with less than $3 million. The $6.3 million it earned already makes this their 7th highest grossing movie total in just three days, so it was becoming quite buzzy. All of this combined together to make me curious enough to figure out what the deal was here.
With this movie being an anti-abortion piece of propaganda, this is obviously very sensitive subject matter wherein a lot of people have a lot of different opinions, so I want to tread lightly here. First of all, since I've already trashed Pure Flix quite a bit, I do want to emphasize the fact that I do consider myself Christian. I'm just not going to automatically give a movie a pass just because it preached a religious message. I require it to be a good film, too. I like to say that I'm super picky with Christian films because I want the Christian elements to be portrayed correctly. Good Christian films do exist. Just not ones distributed by Pure Flix. Since "Unplanned" also doubles as a heavy piece of political propaganda, let me also say that I am a registered Republican. That fact actually has surprised a lot of my Facebook friends when I say that, but it's true. It's just that I suppose I don't do a very good job of blindly preaching everything my party says I'm supposed to believe in. I'm a lot more moderate than some of my other Republican friends. I also take things on a case by case basis, looking at each issue separately. And I vote for a candidate, not a party. I'm not afraid to vote for anyone from any party if I think they'll do a better than the candidate from my own party.
All that said, based on me being Christian and Republican, logic states that I'm supposed to believe that abortion is pure evil and should be completely banned, but the issue makes me a lot more conflicted than I usually care to admit. Christianity in general has a statement of morals of what's right and wrong, but free will is something that's also heavily emphasized, so am I supposed to sit here and claim that "pro choice" is a completely evil stance? Sure, if it was someone that I knew, I would strongly encourage the girl to keep the baby and consider adoption if she doesn't think she can properly raise her child. But is it right of me to impose my personal opinions on every woman in the country? The immediate counter-argument to that is the idea that murder isn't something that we would legalize under the argument of allowing freedom of choice. And I totally agree with that. But I will also admit that I feel uncomfortable referring to abortion as murder. And if one claims that abortion is wrong in every scenario without exception, that doesn't align with the official stance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which claims that abortion is acceptable in cases of rape, incest and when the mother's life is in jeopardy. So yeah, this is a very gray subject to me.
Where things get complicated is that this claims to be based on a true story, with our main protagonist of Abby Johnson being heavily involved in the production here. This is her story that she's telling and it's based on her personal memoir of what she experienced as a director of her local Planned Parenthood clinic. But is what she claims accurate? I have no idea. Planned Parenthood has come out with a statement saying the movie is full of inaccuracies, especially when it comes to the healthcare aspect that the film tries to portray. I mean, of course they would, right? They're the ones being portrayed as the evil Empire ran by the devil himself, so why wouldn't they try to make themselves look better? That puts me into an uncomfortable game of "he said/she said." Do I trust Planned Parenthood or do I trust Abby Johnson? The internet is certainly not helpful in the matter since both parties in this debate have a lot of harsh criticism, thus forcing me to rely on my own personal instincts, which I've already stated had me feeling super uncomfortable with the way this was being presented. Do I believe that Planned Parenthood is an angelic organization? I don't know. But all signs for me point to them being unfairly exaggerated to the extreme in this film.
The reasons why I ultimately feel comfortable in siding with Planned Parenthood on this situation is that I don't trust the writers of "God's Not Dead" to have a strong interest in creating an objective movie about an issue they feel strongly about. Said writers are Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon. They didn't direct "God's Not Dead," but the wrote the screenplay for the first two films and they're both wrote and directed "Unplanned." As far as "God's Not Dead" goes, that's a movie that tries to teach the message that God is still alive and is watching out for us. I fully agree with that message, but the way in which they chose to portray that message was very antagonizing. Everyone who is not a Christian in the movie is portrayed in a very dark and evil light, which made me feel gross. Meanwhile, all the Christians are stuck up and arrogant as if they relish in the idea that everyone around them is going straight to Hell for not confessing Christ in this life. When you take that type of angle for your Christian film, you're going to anger every single non-Christian and thus if your goal was to convince them to believe in God, you failed miserably. It's a very non-Christian approach to a Christian message, which in my opinion ultimately does more bad than good.
Not to mention the logic in the movie makes no sense and the filmmaking elements themselves are borderline atrocious. In "God's Not Dead," the movie centers around a debate between the atheist professor and a Christian student. Oddly enough, I think the professor won that debate in terms of providing more believable evidence to his points. The student did a horrible job of defending Christianity. In a real scenario, the professor would've laughed at him and failed him on the spot while all the class watching would've cracked up as well. But of course the professor cowered in fear at his stupid arguments and the whole class confessed out loud that they believe in God. Because, you know, why not? That's not even me addressing the fact that said scenario would've never happened in the first place at a University. To make things better, the movie ends with the professor getting hit by a car. While he's on his death bed, the preacher comes to him and tells him to confess Christ right now before he dies so that his soul can be saved. That scene was so awful that it's almost worth watching just to laugh at in a "it's so bad, it's good" sort of scenario, when in reality the filmmakers were trying their best to make a good Christian film that'll help non-Christians believe in God.
Don't even get me started on "God's Not Dead 2," which gets exponentially worse on every level. They made a third movie which I didn't even see because it failed so miserably at the box office that it didn't even expand for enough for me to give it a shot. In fairness, "Unplanned" isn't quite as bad as the two "God's Not Dead" movies, but I could totally tell it came from the same people as it had the same problems. The main villain lady is so unbelievably evil that her scenes are almost humorous. She has no heart, no soul, and she loves the idea of killing babies. It was ridiculous. Then she also has everyone in her clinic completely sold on this baby-hating philosophy, even our main protagonist, Abby Johnson, for about 90 percent of the movie. Abby is so cold-hearted and manipulative... until she actually sees an abortion take place. She's sitting there looking at the ultrasound and sees the little fetus squirming around trying to avoid the tube that's trying to suck it to its death. I'm clearly no abortion expert, but really? I don't believe that a fetus would ever squirm around like that when it's about to be aborted, yet the evil doctor claimed that happens every time, as if catching the scared fetus is a game to him. Again, I'm not expert, but this all just felt super bogus to me.
Topping all of this off was an ending that took things from bad to worse. When you're trying to be sentimental and emotional with your story, there's an appropriate balance that you should be able to find because there's always the chance that you push it too far and become overly sentimental. This movie unashamedly ran past that line. There was a moment where I thought to myself, "OK movie, I get it." But I think the heavy emotional pounding went on for like 10 additional minutes. It was taking its emotional baseball bat and beating you to a bloody pulp, while making sure you didn't forget that the filmmakers believe that abortion is pure evil and everyone who doesn't repent is going straight to Hell. Not only was that stretched on too long, but after Abby was finished confessing all of her sins and repenting of this gross evil she had participated in, but then I thought the movie was going to end, we essentially began "Unplanned" episode 2, causing me to wonder if I had accidentally signed up for a T.V. miniseries instead of a movie. After she's converted to the good side and made amends with her family, we have to start a court case drama. I don't know how long that went on, but the whole thing was completely unnecessary as it served no purpose to the narrative of the film.
So yeah, I wasn't a fan of this at all. In fairness, though, I can see the appeal behind it. If you're one of those people who do think that abortion is pure evil in every situation with no exceptions, and you also think that Planned Parenthood is ran by the devil himself, this movie feeds right into your beliefs and you are going to walk out thinking that this was the best movie ever made. But the reality of the situation is that if you're not on that bandwagon, the only think that this movie accomplishes is furthering the political divide between the pro-life and the pro-choice crowd. This movie is an extreme piece of political propaganda put out by people on the extreme far right and their exaggerated approach isn't going to win over a single convert to their side. If you want to make an anti-abortion film, then fine. But if you're goal is to show the world why this is bad, then the appropriate choice would be to as objective and fair as possible, while making a good film in the process. But this movie didn't try. They go for the hellfire and brimstone approach. Just like no moderate or liberal is going to be converted by a Trump rally, no pro-choice individual or anyone somewhere in the middle is going to buy into this movie for one second.
My final word about "Unplanned" that I want to say is the discussion behind the rating. The directors were pretty appalled by the MPAA giving them an R and they immediately played the victim card, claiming that so much sex, violence and language is acceptable in a PG-13 film, but the MPAA is out to get them by giving their important anti-abortion piece an R in some sort of effort to sabotage their film because a lot of Christians don't see R-rated movies. That's a bunch of crap. The MPAA is not out to get them. They just made a really graphic, bloody film. There's three extremely graphic scenes in this movie that would've potentially made this movie R on their own. Combine them together and this is unquestionably R. There's one specific scene in a bathroom with so much blood and blood clots all over the place that I was grossed out. That scene, while brief, was way more graphic than plenty of other R-rated films. Yes, I have my issues with the MPAA as a whole and I'm not shy to point out the hypocrisy of the system, but "Unplanned" is not a movie where I'll question the rating. It easily earns an R. Feel free to still see it if you want, just beware of the content and don't come out complaining that the movie was victimized by the MPAA because that's stupid.
Super long review here, but I hope I got my message out loud and clear. I didn't want to rush things and I wanted to make my opinion absolutely certain so that you don't run out thinking I'm a pro-choice liberal. If anyone asks me my opinion on abortion, ultimately I'm against it. I just think it's a much more complex issue than some on the far right make it out to be and if we're going to do an anti-abortion movie, I would've loved to see a more objectively fair approach rather than an absurdly exaggerated hellfire and brimstone approach. No, not all propaganda is bad. The word often gets an immediate negative connotation, but there's a right way and a wrong why to approach a propaganda film. My argument here is that "Unplanned" does it the wrong way. It's a gross piece of political propaganda that's trying to hide as a religious film, which only makes it worse as it tries to guilt you into believing that their political opinion is the only correct way. Making things worse is the fact that the filmmaking elements are just not done well at all and I choose to put all the blame on writers and directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon for proving yet again that they have no idea how to properly make a film. My grade for "Unplanned" is a 4/10.
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