Judging by the Trailer: "The Song"

By Rev. Adam McKinney on September 24, 2014

I've taken the summer off from reviewing awful trailers, but a siren song called me back into the fray. My ears burnt with the suspicion that a new film will be miraculously shone down upon legions of bussed-in parishes. After devoting more of my year than necessary drunkenly catching up Christian films with my friends (God's Not Dead, in particular, is ripe for camp appreciation), I may have finally met my match - a film that appears to be so stultifyingly dull and frustratingly competent that I can't imagine bearing down and actually watching the thing.

Ah, so, here we have The Song. Allegedly based on the life of King Solomon (a guy from that Bible thing), The Song follows the story of singer-songwriter Jed King (yep!), son of David King (YEP!), as he chases his dream of stardom, even as the road and the lure of foul temptresses threatens his blissful family life. King, as portrayed by Christian rock artist Alan Powell, looks distractingly like Joaquin Phoenix, which is unfortunate, seeing as the movie looks essentially like Walk the Line with presumably less drugs and prison concerts.

As far as how close the film hews to the life of Solomon, I can't very well say. All I know about the guy is that he tended to solve problems by cutting babies in half. If there's any baby mutilation to be found in The Song, the trailer is being awfully coy about it. Thankfully, fellow Volcano scribe Christian Carvajal (a man who's actually read the Bible), had this to say:

"It's based on the life of Solomon to exactly the extent my life is based on that of Spanish conquistador Francisco de Carvajal. I wonder if ‘Rose Jordan' (ugh) will be okay with ‘Jed King's' (get it? GET IT?!) hundreds of wives and concubines, aka sex slaves. Also, she needs to make sure he doesn't peep on his neighbors' Jacuzzi."

Wise words! I'll just wait until Nicolas Cage's Left Behind gets its crazy stank all over theaters next month.