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Better than most people think

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The first hour was mind numbingly slow. The ending was as predictable as any other random chick flick. From a production standpoint The Good Catholic leaves much to be desired. It's 2017 and we're still making movies about priests falling in love? I sort of expected something that would make me think a bit more. From a catholic perspective it's clear the movie is an attack on clerical celibacy and pre-k bible interpretation. From a critical perspective, please save your time and money and spend 90 minutes doing something else instead of watching this low budget, predictable, and theologically infantile made for TV movie.

I think the ending is disgraceful. It is not an open one but it tells us exactly that they will stay together. I think that people have a free will and decide what they want to do with their life at some point as grown ups and should make a fixed commitment to what they do independently if it is being a priest or getting married, etc. So giving a permission to someone to make up his mind in the middle of the process by just saying it is all about love is not fair. Grass is always greener on the other side, I know that being a priest is tough, no family, loneliness, but being in a marriage today and keeping it lifelong is also a real challenge, so whatever our vocation is in this life I think we should stick to it and try harder to make it work because giving up is the easiest way to do but brings regrets after all.

THE GOOD CATHOLIC finds a decent young man trying to follow a path set out for him by his father, that of a Catholic priest. We can sense from the first scene his restlessness in the confines of this dogma-bound and tightly constricted role. He yearns for meaning in life and thought to satisfy that yearning in the priesthood but finds himself embracing phantoms until an edgy and clever young woman enters his life. She claims to be dying but touches him with her spark of individuality and suddenly he understands his life can be more than a period of long waiting for the end, more than fear of hell and hope of heaven. The movie evokes very powerfully the deep yearning of youth for a lifetime story of love and meaning, for experiencing something intense and alive before it's too late, the awful fear that youth has that it will never be young.

I was lucky enough to see this film and thoroughly enjoyed it! I knew some of the basic story line, but found that I was still glued to the screen as the movie progressed. I was pulled in by the actors and felt their emotions and points of stress! It was fascinating watching how the story grew and changed and how the characters dealt with it all. I work in a church and could relate to the well-acted subtleties of having "church" in the mix! The movie has some really funny parts and very serious and tense parts. This is the kind of movie that sparks conversation. Please don't miss it!