Ray Comfort is on a mission to make sure his film Audacity doesn’t end up at the bottom of the IMDb Worst Movies list (where his buddy Kirk Cameron‘s film ended up last year). So he tweeted this yesterday:

Atheists hijacked IMDB and gave “Audacity” bad reviews. Feel free to leave yours…

This is another one of those lies Christians tell themselves when living in a Persecution Bubble.

In Comfort’s mind, there’s no possible way his movie is just flat-out, objectively awful. So there must be some conspiracy to make it look bad.

I promise you I never got the memo from Richard Dawkins to manipulate the movie’s ratings.

But there’s an easy way to test his theory. Let’s just look at what the reviews said before Comfort’s tweet went out. If the movie’s ratings were just being “hijacked” by atheists, then you’d expect the reviews to offer nothing of substance.

What we actually find are fully-justified reasons for giving the movie 1 star out of 10 (the lowest possible rating):

One of the worst apologetics movies I have ever seen. Unbelievable scenarios, poor acting, and a mish-mash of highly edited interviews by Ray Comfort. Bad analogies used to warn of hell. Unbelievable portrayal of gay characters. I suspect there were no gay actors involved in this movie. I also suspect no gay people were actually asked for advice in the making of this movie. The basic message of the movie is that gay people need to stop being gay. Christians won’t accept gay people till they stop the gayness and the warnings of hell and eternal torture are all part of God’s loving plan for humanity. … Audacity is actually a good name for it, because after watching it, I felt that it was an audacious attempt to pass off a cringe-worthy script, an utterly facile plot (with a pointless twist), completely one-dimensional characters, seemingly endless footage of Ray Comfort ‘witnessing’ to gay people in atypically dulcet tones (suggesting his contribution was dubbed in afterward), a wad of patronising self- righteousness, frequent nuggets of not-so-subtle stereotyping, and a couple of baddies, as a ‘movie’. The Too Expensive, Didn’t Buy version of the plot is this: According to Ray Comfort, homosexuality is a choice, homosexuals are going to burn in hell if they don’t believe what he believes, and you’re a bad person if you don’t go around telling EVERYONE that Ray is right, and reality is wrong. … But, as usual in a Ray Comfort movie, the big hero is Ray Comfort playing himself. We get lots of footage of his trademark street interviews. This time the topic is homosexuality, and Comfort uses his brilliant intellect to convince his interviewees (all intelligent interviewees are, as always, left on the cutting room floor) that homosexuality is evil. Because the Bible says so. Meanwhile, we have the story of Peter and Diana. Peter is a Christian who knows homosexuality is evil. Diana doesn’t agree but after seeing Ray Comfort’s brilliant Youtube videos she will inevitably change her mind. The tag line of the film is “Love can’t stay silent”, and our protagonist, Peter, shows his Christian love by never missing a chance to preach to the gays or break up their relationships. Becauase as always in the Orwellian world of Ray Comfort’s god, love is hate, hate is love. This film exists only to tell homosexuals they must change, to remind others they must never accept homosexuals for who they are but, in the name of “love”, always remind them of how wretched and sinful they are, and (last but not least) to provide Ray Comfort with another ego boost. And I’m a sucker who was so curious about this movie I actually paid to see it before it’s going to be released for free on Youtube. … The vitriolic hate speech in this movie is jaw-dropping. Comfort passively compares homosexuality to theft and murder without even the barest hint that he should be apologizing for existing as he says that. Repeated references to “the punishment you deserve” should make any right thinking person swallow back a little vomit. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m including roadkill when I say that. … Everything in it is a caricature of something or someone you’ve already seen before. A religious man portrays gay people and their allies as argumentative people who want to ignore everyone and sin, sin, SIN! Of course, the religious people are meek, polite, and just trying to help. None of them would ever step on your toes, let alone reflect realities like insulting or physically harming gay people, usurping the legal rights of gay people, and of course they would never use torture to change gay people. Not being gay is the only acceptable way to be, but those darn gays, they really like to be mean and persecute Christians who are just trying to help! Gay people just need a good Christian to butt-in and change them into heterosexuals! … Don’t pay for it, wait until is free online if you dare yo watch this nonsense. Don’t give them money. I watch[ed] it because a Christian paid for it to show me how I could stop acting on my gayness and go to heaven

In short: People who saw the film said it was legitimately horrible and gave their reasons for it.

Sure, there are a couple of reviews in there from people who clearly made up their minds before viewing it, but you’ll find that for just about every movie offering a controversial point of view.

Meanwhile, several of the 10-star reviews published yesterday were written by people who obviously never saw the film and couldn’t even make references to anything in it. It’s just a lot of mentions of Christ, God, and homosexuals.

Moral of the story: It’s okay to lie as long as you’re doing it for Jesus.

…

By the way, I’m one of the people who actually saw the film.

The 1-star reviews make complete sense.

Jessica and I will be discussing the film in depth on the next episode of our podcast (released tomorrow!) and we’ll also have an exclusive interview with the star of that film.

Trust me: Once you hear us dissect the plot, you’ll know why those 1-star reviews were completely justified.

(Thanks to @CalleBookworm for the link)



