Plot Summary
When a Christian businessman decides to invest in a Christian drama theater, he hires a stage director, Rudy, an office manager, Johanna, and five cast members, Travis, Jon, Jamie, Kelly, and Andi, to put together weekly plays centered around Christian themes. As the actors and actresses write the shows and rehearse them to perform them, they learn life lessons that they intend to teach their audiences. They also do life together and form a community with each other.
Production Quality (1.5 points)
Since this series is entirely based on a bunch of people sitting around in two to three theater sets, you can imagine how cheap and limited these sets are. There are no locations to speak of, and props are kind of silly, although this concept is also embraced as normal. A lot of production shortcuts are taken and are justified by the format. Early in this season, video quality is blurry, but this improves throughout. Camera work is relatively stable. Audio quality is fine throughout, but Jasper Randall delivers his same old silly soundtrack that can be found in any given Christiano production. Finally, editing is almost nonexistent as most scenes drag on way too long to pump the runtime. Every episode also ends with an annoying freeze frame. Basically, though this is an average production, it has a lot of work to do.
Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)
The Christiano brothers have never been known for their subtlety, and the 7th Street Theater saga is the most obvious messaging ever. This series is a venue for them to push their forcefully fundamental ideas through extremely scripted and childish dialogue. It’s full of typical goody-two shoes Christian characters who don’t make any ‘bad’ mistakes, as well as a few strawman non-Christian characters and allusions to ‘bad’ things that can’t be talked about. This series overall demonstrates just how much the Christiano brothers live in their own little world, especially with the priceless episode that serves as apologetics for that horrid thing called Pamela’s Prayer, which is an entirely different topic that space does not permit a full analysis of. Basically, this series is everything you can imagine from the Christianos, and worse.
Acting Quality (1 point)
With a severely small cast, over 400 minutes of runtime is too much to see them over and over and over again. They are extremely bland and overly practiced in their delivery. They come off as fake, plastic people and even have weird racial undertones. Though there is some improvement throughout the season, this is a very poor job.
Continuity Quality (0 points)
This saga is allergic to continuity. As one thing after the next happens, there is an extreme amount of redundancy and repetition. There are zero story arcs and absolutely no character arcs—everything stays relatively the same throughout this pointless season. Thus rounds out an unfortunately unsurprising failure.
Conclusion
Though there is probably some part of the Christiano brothers that means well in their entertainment, they have no idea how to subtly communicate a Christian message or even how to relate to real people. In their world, Christians are goody-two-shoes plastic people who are insulated from ‘bad stuff’ and exist in a bubble where they all tell each other how good they are. But when you think about it, this is probably just another day in the life for most Christian film makers.
Final Rating: 2.5 out of 14 points
Box Office Revolution 