CAPAlert is a genuinely
strange website. No consideration is given to a film's
artistic merit or the overall
positivity or
negativity of its message; the writer concentrates solely on issues such as how many "uses of
the most foul of the foul words" there are. [How does he know what the foulest word is? Where in the Bible is
that word even mentioned?] It begs the question: why count? Do people need to know whether
the Lord's name is taken in vain 65 times or 83 times? And is the
reviewer using that clicker so much that he's missing the entire
plot of the movie? Even the (exceedingly rare) positive reviews focus on the few "
offensive" portions, such as the "threat of
physical violence" in
Toy Story 2. I find this strict
quantitative analysis of films to be completely joyless, immature, and ignorant. Is there any doubt that a by-the-numbers filming of the
Bible itself would garner a "Red Alert"?
I have a sneaking suspicion that the site is more often read as a goof by folks like myself than by actual Christians wondering which movies contain tattoos or smoking. If you're a devout Christian looking for movie reviews which take your faith into consideration, I instead recommend "Christian Spotlight on the Movies" (http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/home.html). Even as a non-Christian I was impressed with the quality of the reviews on that site. There are separate "Moral Ratings" and "Moviemaking Quality Ratings", and the site wisely states the "primary audience" at the top of each review. Unlike CAPAlert, this site speaks both to parents trying to protect their children and adults with the maturity to handle adult themes and content.