Vowing to reclaim the acts of submission and flagellation for Jesus, the filmmakers behind youth minister porn God’s Not Dead have announced their faith-based riposte to Fifty Shades Of Grey, which they hope will provide a holy alternative to the hole-y romance next Valentine’s Day. Titled Old Fashioned by producers who have clearly never watched South Park, the “Godly romance” is set to open the same weekend as Fifty Shades, in what its writer, director, and star Rik Swartzwelder says will create a “David v. Goliath comparison,” in that it will be the Christian version of getting one’s rocks off. But also in that he’s “hopeful that we are not alone in our belief that there are others out there who desire more from love—and the movies—than objectification or domination,” unless it’s being dominated by God.
Like Fifty Shades, Old Fashioned is the story of the meek giving themselves over to a powerful sociopath who randomly inflicts suffering—their reward being the kingdom of heaven, which is the ultimate in really nice apartments. It stars Swartzwelder as “a former frat boy” and Elizabeth Ann Roberts as a “free-spirited woman,” who overcome their respective checkered pasts as university students and women who are not laden with humility and child, presumably through sessions of wild, sweaty thumping of bibles. And as they put themselves in this missionary position, spreading the word of God as wide as it can go, the Holy Spirit fills them to the point of bursting.
Promising a return to the good old days before “love” meant wealthy billionaires hiring women to spank, the tagline for Old Fashioned is “Chivalry makes a comeback.” Female moviegoers will thrill to seeing their dirty, secret wish realized that a man might come along and open their back door—holding it open and holding it open, until they just can’t stand it anymore. They’ll allow themselves to be bound by church doctrine forbidding premarital sex and blindfolded by faith, falling to their knees to service the Lord, again and again. And finally, they will give themselves over completely to the contract that promises love, if only they strictly obey the rules governing their body. Holy crap.