Review: Saved! (12A)

WHATEVER enthusiasm I had for ultra-Christian themes was flogged out of me by the repellent, the annoying, The Passion of the Christ.

Saved! is my salvation. A pin-sharp, snide, funny teen movie set in a conservative Christian high school in the bland concrete of middle America.

Mary (Malone) is one of its cloyingly devout pupils and the send-up of the ultra-pious starts when boyfriend Dean tells her he's gay. Virgin Mary tries her utmost to "cure" him but ends up pregnant.

Her mum just thinks she's putting on weight but she's got her own issues having an affair with the school's married pastor - an unhappy man who tries to win the kids over with dated street slang. It's a neat hypocrisy and one of many smart pokes at the false vanity of religious types.

Mary ends up an outsider and is taken in by the nonbelievers: the school's lone Jew, the engagingly subversive Cassandra (Amurri); and the cynical, wheelchair-bound Roland (Macaulay Culkin).

They battle with Roland's sister, Hilary Faye (Moore) and her clan, whose controlling ber-piety masks a nasty and inflexible meanness. The factions head for a show-down at - where else - the high school prom.

Hardcore Bible bashers are an easy target to stereotype and Saved!, while crammed with great lines, often shirks its sense of balance, keeping just one notable moderate Christian in the frame. And though it mocks religion, it is heavy on messages of its own.

But its complex and effective cast is crowned by the wry timing from Amurri (daughter of Susan Sarandon) and Culkin's dry wit (an adult career now looking more likely?).

Saved! produces more than just a poke at spiteful God squad nerds talking up love but spewing out hate. A bold, part-serious teen movie, it may not be gospel but it's sure to convert many.

Mono rating: seven out of ten