Saved! (2004)

Saved! follows the standard teen-cliques-at-war format of ''Mean Girls'' or early John Hughes, but with a difference: It's set at a Christian high school, and everyone in it -- teachers, prom queens, geeks -- is proudly religious. Mandy Moore, as the senior bitch princess, leads a rock band for the Lord, and Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) tries to win over the kids by hollering ''Let's get our Christ on!'' The director-cowriter, Brian Dannelly, has great fun tweaking the way American Christianity has been born again as a commodified, suburbanized, pop-saturated belief system.

Early on, the heroine, Mary (Jena Malone), learns that her boyfriend is gay, and when his parents send him off to Mercy House, a treatment center for sinners, I braced myself for a smug anticlerical bash. ''Saved!'', though, skewers hypocrisy and absolutism but not faith itself. Patrick Fugit, from ''Almost Famous,'' turns up as the pastor's son, and Fugit acts with a cherubic benevolence that makes you realize the kid he's playing is a true believer -- and all the sexier for it. The film has one dimension, however, that's a major problem: Mary gets pregnant, and her crisis is ''resolved'' with a starry-eyed naÏveté that borders on the irresponsible. I wish that ''Saved!'' weren't a facile pro-life movie. Its plea for Christian tolerance is message enough.

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