Director Steve Taylor unfolds the truth about the complexities of experiencing life on your own terms, feeling ashamed of your background and roots, and exploring the new sensations of the forbidden. Don Miller (Marshall Allman) comes face-to-face with his own hypocrisy, and somehow finds a way to translate his own ideals in a way that he can help to serve others.
Promising young Don Miller, as the assistant youth pastor in his home-town Baptist church in southern Texas, led a very upright Christian life, living with his attractive divorced mother. On a visit to his dropped-out, atheistic father's (Eric Lange) camper, Miller receives a graduation gift of free enrollment into Portland's raucous Reed College with the instruction: "Go somewhere where they don't hand you the script, and tell you to copy it!"
While John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" plays in the background, his father explains that Coltrane's free-form spiritual jazz bursts forth like a sunrise pushing the sun right out of the earth. The powerful and enlightening album is representative of a personal struggle for purity, and expresses Coltrane's deep gratitude as he admits that his talent and instrument are not owned by him, but by a spiritual higher power. His father advises Don to write his own story and make the life-changing decision to attend the unconventional, but enriching Reed College.
Unfortunately, during the visit, Don receives a call from his evangelical Mom (Jenny Littleton), and discovers that she is having an adulterous affair with his mentor, Youth Pastor Kenny (Jason Marsden). Outraged with disillusionment and disbelief, he rebels against the hypocrisy of his faith, and makes the fateful decision that will take him on the back roads of humanity and into the recesses of moral abandonment.
With anger in his heart and wonderment before him, Miller steps out into his new life at Reed. While students rollick around the campus, dance on the greens, and pass out multitudes of condoms, Miller is amazed by this radical environment. He quickly hides his discarded faith and embraces his new role as college initiate where he meets new classmates: activist Penny (Claire Holt), a pretty, young Christian intent on making the world a better place; lesbian Lauryn (Tania Raymonde) struggling with acceptance and rejection; and the flamboyant Pope (Justin Welborn), who carries the wisdom of life's dilemmas.
Director Steve Taylor holds no bars when it comes to mature content. The rating is PG-13 with drugs, alcohol, sexuality, satire and four-letter words – not for sensitive eyes or ears (or even those offended by anti-Christian slurs). He takes you on a rollercoaster ride of debate and decision on choices and lifestyles. You'll watch Miller struggle to emerge as his true self with convictions that manifest from a sense of strong Christian belief into a life of service and love. This is a unique Christian movie riddled with adult content and not for "baby" Christians. It's an honest depiction of college life and the experiences you are likely to find there. But it does show how a young man can abandon his ideals for acceptance, only to pick them back up when he is secure and has found the real essence of self-discovery.
Blue Like Jazz's special features are many: Audio Commentary with Author Donald Miller, Cinematographer Ben Pearson, and Director Steve Taylor; Making Blue Like Jazz; Master Class: Directing Actors on Set; Deleted Shots; Photo Gallery, Save Blue Like Jazz Featurette; "The Cast" Featurette; "The Animator" Featurette; "This Is My Story" Featurette; "The Music" Featurette: and the Theatrical Trailer. Always a delight to hear are the group commentaries as they share insider information with the viewer.
Author Donald Miller expands in Blue Like Jazz on his passionate topic of the fatherless epidemic in America where he writes "growing up without a dad, struggling with what it means to be a man, and eventually meeting and forgiving his father after 30 years” was made personal in his portrayal Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation. Check out the link below for more info.
While I wasn't crazy about the film, it was a good movie. It just didn't particularly appeal to me.
