Self-published movies 1: Journey to Paradise

Between writing my previous blog post about the appeal of Bad Movies and getting this review ready, I thought of a good metaphor for current day Bad Movies: they are the self-published books of the movie world. Authors who can't find a commercial publisher for their works often take the self-publishing route. Once in a while, a hit will emerge--both The Christmas Box and Fifty Shades of Grey began life as self-published books and eventually became best-sellers when picked up by mainstream publishers. I've read a handful of such books; some are awful, though some just badly need a strong editorial hand, something that self-publishers can avoid. The movies I'll be reviewing strike me as essentially "self-published": all are works distributed by their creators, all feel like labors of love, and all could most assuredly have benefited from rewrites, bigger budgets, a more objective producer, and more professional actors. My first example is Journey to Paradise from 2010.

Channel 7 in the small town of Paradise, Wisconsin is known as Paradise 7 and has been in business for years, run by the Collins family. But as Christmas approaches, trouble is brewing. A larger Wisconsin media company apparently wants to muscle in and Lucy Collins (Hannah Fager) wants to bring in a new associate producer to pump up their ratings. During a pre-Christmas station party (it's only December 1st but that’s just how much Pop Collins loves Christmas), a handsome guy from Chicago arrives at the studio. Lucy assumes he's there about the position, though we can tell from his behavior that he's there for some other reason. Still, Joe McNamara (Matt Koester) goes through an informal interview and Lucy decides impulsively to hire him on the spot. The family even offers him temporary use of a small apartment above the studio. Everyone loves Joe, except for Lucy's obnoxiously protective brother Mike who doesn't trust him and has frequent altercations with him. As it happens, we learn there might well be something that Joe is keeping secret about his presence; we see him clandestinely watching videos that Lucy had made and sent to her fiancé while he was in the military—we know that she is no longer engaged and that it's a topic that has made her less interested in celebrating Christmas. Soon, we discover that Joe has his own unresolved pain; when he interviews a pastor on TV about a Christmas event, Joe goes off on a tangent, questioning the idea that God has all the answers, and making the interview go off the rails. Despite all this, sparks begin to fly between Lucy and Joe, but they're both going to have to reveal their past secrets to each other if they want to build a relationship.

I'm hesitant about giving this the Bad Movie label: there are a lot of problems with this low-budget, almost amateur movie, but I slowly warmed to the film almost despite itself. As a Christmas romance, it's a little more dramatic than the kind that Hallmark shows. It was produced by Salty Earth Productions, whose mission statement is to provide “entertainment […] to share Christ, Jesus with the world.” Oddly, however, the explicitly religious material feels shoehorned into the story—there are only really two or three scenes in which God or Jesus are even brought up. The one scene that doesn't work at all involves Joe walking through the small town, thinking about his conflict while an awful country song about Jesus being the reason for the season plays and images of the Bible and of nativity sets are superimposed over the visuals. I don’t object to the content (duh, it's a Christmas movie!) but the sledgehammer style feels so out of place in what is otherwise a relatively thoughtful narrative about dealing with loss and building a new life. I like the fact that at the end, Joe’s spiritual quandary is still not completely resolved.

This was directed and co-written by Steven F. Zambo who is also the head of Salty Earth Productions, and thus this is a perfect example of the self-published movie that  might have been better with the feedback and creative participation of others. The two leads are both fine, though they have not gone on to work in many other films. Matt Koester (pictured; notice the subtle Dead End sign indicating where his agnosticism will take him) has done stage work and has appeared in couple of other Salty Earth productions, but I'm surprised that Hannah Fager, who looks and acts the part of the TV-movie Christmas heroine to a tee, has no other acting credits on IMDb. On the other hand, the rest of the cast is almost uniformly amateurish (though Daniel Koester, Matt's real-life brother, shows promise as Lucy's aggressive brother).

The central story idea, which I don't want to spill too much about, is original and interesting, but important plot points are ignored or brought up so late in the proceedings that they feel, like the religious aspect, plopped in at the last minute. Individual scenes go on too long until they fade to black, as though an ad was coming up. Basically, at least one more draft of the screenplay would have been beneficial. Worst of all is the dog puppet that the weatherman insists on carrying and using all the time; I hated it so much that I have apparently blocked its name out of my head, despite its frequent use. Though fairly serious in tone (what with its themes of spiritual searching and dealing with guilt from the past), there are many moments of humor, not all of which come off. At 2 hours, it's way too long, but for reasons I can't quite articulate, I have a soft spot for this local Wisconsin production, and I'd watch it again. This is an ineptly-made film which almost manages to transcend that problem, but I'm not sure many others would agree with me--even a few Christian film critics don't care for this. Next up, another Salty Earth production.