Answering the call of heaven
Mark Wahlberg’s ‘Father Stu’ a cockeyed dreamer
Amostly mediocre effort, the Mark Wahlberg vehicle “Father Stu” tells the underwhelming story of real-life Montana boxer-turned-priest Stuart Long. It’s sort of “Rocky” with the collar, Catholicism, Wahlberg and Mel Gibson.
The film may be perceived as an act of redemption by Wahlberg and Gibson, who plays Stu’s alcoholic, watery-eyed, estranged father Bill and whose current partner Rosalind Ross wrote and directed the film, making her feature film debut. Aussie Jacki Weaver (“Silver Linings Playbook”) plays Stuart’s mother and Bill’s estranged wife. After ending his boxing career in Montana in the 1990s due to an injury, Stuart heads West for Hollywood in one of several musical montage sequences to become a star, of course, despite having no experience or acting talent.
As played by 50-year-old Wahlberg, Stuart is a cockeyed dreamer with a handlebar mustache and too much self-confidence, who questions things and who is running out of time to pursue his dreams. He manages to get a job in a mop commercial and follows a beautiful young woman named Carmen (Teresa Ruiz) from the butcher counter where he works to a Mexican-Catholic church, where she, a devout Catholic, teaches Sunday school, among other things.
Hard-living, atheist Stuart, who meets a mysterious, water-drinking stranger (Niko Nicotera) at a bar, has a horrific crash on his motorcycle. Miraculously, he survives. Soon, Stuart has been baptized, made his confession and taken Communion. On the cusp of marrying Carmen, which is what all this was supposed to be about,
Stuart decides that he wants to be a priest. If you decide to wash your hands of Stuart at this point, I don’t blame you.
Wahlberg has played a lot of ordinary guys stuck in extraordinary circumstances throughout his career. I must say I did not find the shots of Stuart alone, making faces suggesting distress and clutching rosary beads very convincing.
Former “A Clockwork Orange” “Droogie” Malcolm McDowell appears as Monsignor Kelly, who observes that Stuart, who wants to become a seminarian, is a “pugilist with a criminal record” and you tend to see his point. Aside from being “a dog with a bone,” Stuart has done nothing to demonstrate that he would be a good priest and “Father Stu” does little to make you want to know more about him.
Something then happens to Stuart that would shake the faith of lesser beings. Gibson appears at intervals as Stuart’s increasingly less angry and estranged father. You can see where this is headed, although you may not care much either way. In talking about his faith, Stuart repeatedly refers to Christ’s time on the cross, reminding us of Gibson’s 2004 box-office smash “The Passion of the Christ.”
The habitually buff Wahlberg put on 30 pounds to play the ailing Stuart. There is some competition going on between Stuart and a fellow seminarian played by Aussie Cody Fern. This also does not add up to much of anything. But in one scene, Stuart and his competitor go to a prison, where Stuart is able to communicate with inmates because he speaks their language. It is one of the few scenes in the film that work, but it is not worth the two-hour wait to get to it. (“Father Stu” contains profanity.)