The Greatest Movie in the World – Fireproof

Today’s Greatest Movie in the World:

Fireproof stars 80’s sitcom superstar Kirk Cameron as a frustrated fireman in a dying marriage. Cameron’s character, Caleb Holt, is angry with his wife because she is a woman. This speaks to the everyman in every man that watches the movie because what man hasn’t been frustrated with a woman because she is weaker, and less intelligent than a man? Caleb Holt is a sympathetic character because he all he wants is for his wife to treat him like the king that he is. Afterall, Caleb reasons, he is a fireman and he deserves to be treated like a king because he is a hero and his wife isn’t.

The rest of the cast of Fireproof is made up of members from Cameron’s church. No other professional actors were hired for this film, it’s all up to Mike Seaver himself and his fellow parishoners. I found this to be a bold move and I wondered how it would play out. Would the church members act like normal people, or would they act like actors acting like normal people? Fortunately, they chose the latter of the two options.

Harris Malcolm gives a particularly wooden performance as Caleb Holt’s father, John, which felt more realistic because he was so wooden and boring. Most fathers are wooden and boring (particularly the preachy ones who have created something called the “Love Dare” to save a marriage”) so it was refreshing to see that Malcolm wasn’t trying to act so much as he was trying to pretend like he was acting. Truly, brilliant stuff.

What makes this the greatest movie in the world though? Simply put: boats. More specifically, Kirk Cameron’s addiction to boats on the internet. One of biggest conflicts in Caleb and Catherine’s marriage is that Caleb is completely addicted to looking at pictures of boats on the internet and Catherine just can’t take it anymore. Everytime she comes home, she logs onto the computer, checks the history, and then she flips out because her husband has been looking at boat pictures all day long. He has been saving to buy a boat for years and his selfish wife just wants to use the money to repair the house.

To my knowledge, this is the only film that really deals with the issue of Internet Boat Picture Addiction (or IBPA). Every year, 50 people are afflicted with this terrible, debilitating disease in the Continental US, Great Britain, and China combined. If you aren’t an IBPA addict, then you know someone who is one, or you know someone who knows someone, or you have heard of someone once who was addicted to it. If you are none of those things, then you should meet my uncle. My uncle has a friend who lost his wife because he was addicted to looking at pictures of boats. There was nothing sexual about the boats, and I think that might have been the problem. If there was something sexual about it, maybe she wouldn’t have minded so much, but as it was, she was just really disturbed that he cared so much about boats, but he would never buy one.

I disgress.

Kirk Cameron is simply electrifying in this film, it has a strong message, and the boring old church people expertly played a bunch of boring old people and for those three reasons (and many, many, more) this is the greatest movie ever.

Want to watch Fireproof?

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