"The Great Adventure" by Kevin Quinn and the Cast of A WEEK AWAY, Saturday, July 24, 2021

In March Netflix released A Week Away, a Christian camp musical incorporating originals and the songs of Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, Rich Mullins, Audio Adrenaline, For King and Country, and Amy Grant into Disney Channel quality musical numbers. Shortly after, the podcast Good Christian Fun reviewed the movie, which is how I heard about it. However, it wasn't until today when I was listening to a conversation with Faith Based film maker Luke Barnett on You Have Permission that I remembered that I HAD to watch A Week Away. I had so many thoughts upon watching the movie that I think that my blog format is too restrictive. I would love to explore my own awkward summer camp experiences or tell the truth "slant" in fiction with one of my characters. However, I think that just talking about the film itself will be sufficient in terms of word count. So, on the very unlikely chance that one of these songs makes my "Song a Day" list again in a following month, the muses might spark a little fiction.

I OPENED UP THE BIBLE AND I READ ABOUT ME (AND YOU). First off, I recommend this movie with a hell of a lot of reservations. It's not good. It's got a 52% Rotten Tomato and a 32% Metacritic score. Without treading too much on the Good Christian Fun review of the movie, I would say the songs are nostalgic for a certain demographic, and that probably brought at least 50% of the audience to the movie (myself included), but then again, I don't understand the Evangelical movement these days. The creative force behind the movie is writers Allan Powell, Kali Bailey, and Gabe Vasquez. The first of whom has a Wikipedia page that says Powell is best known for playing a role in ABC's third season of Quantico. The movie was directed by Roman White. A Week Away is White's second movie. However, White has been directing since 2003 and has directed 115 music videos, listed on Wikipedia. Starting with the 2003 video for The Benjamin Gate's "All Over Me," White directed several Christian Rock videos including Pillar's "Bring Me Down" (2004) and Seventh Day Slumber's "Caroline" (2005), but then switched almost exclusively to Country music videos with a few pop/rock exceptions. He directed several Taylor Swift videos, his most famous, "You Belong with Me" and Carry Underwood's mega hits "Jesus Take the Wheel" and "Before He Cheats." So it makes sense that Roman White would be enlisted to direct a long-form music video.

GONNA LEAVE LONG-FACED RELIGION. The plot is as predictable as: "I don't know how I could ever pay for this big, thick juicy pizza." "I can think of a way." Bad boy Will (Kevin Quinn of Disney Channel fame) steals a police car and is threatened with juvey, but because he's white and pretty, he gets a second (or 14th?) chance to be fostered by Kirsten (Sherri Shepherd, AKA 30 Rock's The Queen of Jordan) and is taken to a Christian summer camp for a week. The campers are not a think like I remembered Christian camp campers to be, with no references to sex, drugs, or anything off-color in their conversations. Will is reluctant to join in until he meets Avery (Bailee Madison), who plays the "Christian hot girl trope." Her presence in the movie helps Will to overcome all of his issues of being abandoned by God who let his parents die, putting him into the foster care system, though we first have to have the big reveal that Will is not actually a Christian, just pretending to be to impress Avery. The movie features cameos by Amy Grant and Steven Curtis Chapman, some extremely cringey moments, a few funny lines, and has a sappy ending. What makes simultaneously abhor and adore this movie is that I thought of it first. I wrote this exact plot as a 11th grade creative writing assignment. The story was a little different, a rock star, Josh, is sentenced to community service in an Evangelical ministry in Atlanta where his ideas about religion are transformed by how hip the church is and how the ministry really helps people, but mostly because he wants to impress a beautiful woman, Alicia. Where's my Netflix movie? But seriously, check out A Week Away if you want to cringe at your Christian upbringing, but that's probably the only reason I would recommend this movie.

Trailer: