Joseph Holmes

7 min read ⭑

“Unsung Hero” proves that Kingdom Story Company knows how to keep its quality regardless of who’s in the director’s chair. Unfortunately, this film also reminds us these movies are likely to retain most of the studio’s weaknesses as well as their strengths.

The Erwin brothers (“I Can Only Imagine” and “Jesus Revolution”) started Kingdom Story Company to be a faith-based studio they could use to support other Christian filmmakers to create movies — not just make their own. Now, with movies like “Ordinary Angels,” “Unsung Hero” and the upcoming Dallas Jenkins-directed film, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” we’re getting to see what the Erwin brothers accomplishing their goal looks like. And what it looks like is a lot more of the kind of movies that the Erwin brothers have made a part of their brand. That includes both their virtues and their flaws as filmmakers.

“Unsung Hero” follows the Smallbone family, particularly David Smallbone (played by Joel Smallbone), the family patriarch, and his wife Helen Smallbone (Daisy Betts), as they move across the world and face numerous hardships to have a better life and help themselves and their children achieve their dreams in the music industry.

The film has the unusual claim of being a semi-autobiographical film, where Joel Smallbone (part of the band “For King and Country”) gets to co-write and co-direct a movie about his family and how they got their start in the music industry — with their sister being their first success. The movie centers primarily on his parents, where he gets to play his father. Luke Smallbone, his brother, was a producer on the film.

Luke Smallbone talked about how surreal it was to make the film, saying: “You don’t ever think you’re living a movie when you’re living it. This is just my childhood. We weren’t trying to do anything special. We were just a family that had a great love for each other, a great love for Jesus, prayed for things, and saw things take place. … The heartbeat behind the movie actually really is this — I believe in the power of family, I think family is more powerful today than ever in the history of the world yet we don’t value it like we should. Mother Teresa says, ‘If you want to change the world, go home and love your family,’ and I think that’s actually really the blueprint behind the film.”  

Kingdom Story Company continues to be the gold standard when it comes to consistently making quality mainstream Christian theatrical experiences in the faith-based film industry, particularly in the visual and acting realms. The Erwin brothers pioneered making movies with camerawork, acting and storytelling that could be at home with any average inspirational drama on Netflix, which is why so many have made their home there.

It’s impressive that even the movies that aren’t made by the Erwin brothers themselves, like “Unsung Hero,” continue that tradition. Joel Smallbone and Richard Ramsey do a great job filling those roles. Whether it’s being able to show a concert with dazzling lights or quiet character-driven moments, the images can clearly tell the story they’re trying to tell — something that many faith-based industry movies still struggle with — and even sometimes be genuinely beautiful. In many ways they feel like they’re replicating the style, not just the quality — but it works.

Kingdom Story Company knows how to attract actors who can either turn in great performances like Kelsey Grammar in “Jesus Revolution” or Hilary Swank in “Ordinary Angels.” Joel Smallbone, who was my favorite part of last year’s “Journey to Bethlehem,” turns in a solid performance as his father David, which is impressive given how much of the movie rests on his shoulders. Daisy Betts gives a warm yet steady performance, which anchors the film emotionally as Helen Smallbone. Lucas Black and Candace Cameron Bure are affectingly pleasant as the welcoming preacher and his wife, while Terry O’Quinn evokes gentle gravitas as Grampa James.

The film also has at least one way it improves on other movies in the Kingdom Story lineup. Whereas many Kingdom films seem to minimize dark parts of a story (such as how “I Still Believe” makes Jeremy Camp’s grief over his wife’s death the shortest part of the movie) or portray a dishonest vision of what overcoming your flaws (like “Ordinary Angels” and its portrayal of alcoholism). In this film, there’s a less obvious mismatch. The way a parent’s pride and selfishness can harm a family is acutely portrayed for the most part. It accurately portrays that the way out of that is repentance and forgiveness. And since the movie ends once the parent in question have repented, it sidesteps the problem. 

Unfortunately, despite the heavy involvement of the Smallbone family in making this movie, the family largely comes off as uninteresting and — in the case of the father — deeply unpleasant. Most of the story we spend with David Smallbone, and the second is with Helen. David is like an unfunny Homer Simpson, always making the selfish and prideful choice, then throwing a fit or crying in a fetal position for days when things don’t work out the way he wants. Helen plays the Christian version of Marge Simpson, a long-suffering and level-headed wife who puts up with her husband's selfishness and tries to keep the family together while holding him accountable (but with Jesus). But we really don’t get to know her deeply beyond that. The kids, for their part (including Rebecca Smallbone, who eventually becomes Rebecca St. James) are barely people at all as much as props throughout the story.

The movie is too committed to spending time with David Smallbone to really develop anyone else. It’s too committed to judging his behavior to make his choices empathetic. (Nearly every time he does something we cut to someone’s face like the mom or the kids showing how much he hurt them as a way to push our empathy in that direction.) And it keeps his motives too simple to make his selfishness interesting. We’re therefore left with spending most of the movie with a person we don’t like who’s — worst of all — boring.

This fits in with a weird pattern in Kingdom Story Company movies. Nearly everyone is built around a problematic male protagonist with a perfect love interest who he treats badly, who is then forced to beg for her forgiveness by the end. Whether it’s Bart Millard to Shannon in “I Can Only Imagine,” Kurt Warner to Brenda Meoni in “American Underdog,” Greg Laurie to Cathe in “Jesus Revolution” and now this. It’s an odd pattern to come up in nearly every single one of their films. And it reinforces the idea men have that this is how men are viewed and treated in the Christian community: That they are bad and only good if they do what their wives tell them to do.

It’s the Christian version of the“Doormat Ken or Deplorable Ken” trope. Christian culture critic Aaron Renn has argued that this attitude is pervasive in evangelical circles, and is one of the reasons many men are not attracted to church. Christian author of “The Toxic War on Masculinity,” Nancy Pearcey argues that there’s no evidence that men are treated like doormats by their wives in Christian circles. But Christian movie tropes like this turn off men such that they probably won’t stick around long enough to find out if Pearcey is correct.

The movie’s message also makes no sense. The refrain they beat like a drum throughout the movie is “If you can dream, without letting dreams be your master, you will be a man my son.” This is a really good framework for a potential movie about dreams. After all, how does a Christian dream without letting it be such an obsession that it causes you to put it before things that matter more like God or your family? (Many faith-based films, like “The Hill,” have struggled to handle this well). 

And yet the movie never critiques the characters for dreaming too big or prioritizing such lofty aspirations. When they move to another country to follow David’s dreams, Helen affirms that this was from God. The only time she does criticize him is when he’s not prioritizing their dreams enough. It’s when he’s trying to balance the dreams with other concerns that he’s made out to be a bad guy. Helen even takes her kids on an adventure where they imagine “burning the boats” — putting everything they have into their dreams and never looking back. How does this support the “don’t let your dreams be your master” message? This fits another pattern with Kingdom Story Company movies, where their message makes no sense based on the actual events in the film. It’s something I’ve pointed out in my reviews of “American Underdog” and “Jesus Revolution.” 

I understand how difficult it must be to make a movie about your parents and family. There are a lot of complicated emotions involved, including separating how much you love them from how much they’ve hurt you. I have no doubt the sincerity of what the makers of this were trying to accomplish. But acknowledging what parts of what we made worked and what parts different is the only way to really grow.

‘Unsung Hero’ is a testament to how the Erwin brothers have truly made a studio that can replicate the quality they’ve been able to establish in the faith-based film industry without them in the director’s chair. For those who love the kinds of films they make, this film should be another hit. For those who don’t, there’s nothing in here to change your mind. Hopefully, this will create a launching pad for Christian filmmakers to improve on the Erwin brothers’ formula rather than simply replicating it. That would be a heroic accomplishment I would sing about.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast The Overthinkers and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.

This article is republished from Religion Unplugged under a Creative Commons license.

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