THE CATECHISM CATACYLSM:
Being able to tell a good parable is not one of the talents that can be taught to young priests, it’s a talent that has to be learned with practice. When Father Billy (played by Steve Little) is found to be telling wild and outrageous parables that are inappropriate to his flock, he gets sent on sabbatical. After many, many emails to Robbie (played by Robert Longstreet), Father Billy is able to convince the one person that he idolized during his high school years. These two unlikely friends go on a wild, adventurous, and horrifying canoe trip that will give Father Billy more than he could have ever dreamed of.

RELIGIOUS SATIRE AND STORY TELLING:
The Catechism Catacylsm left me feeling the same way as one of the stories that are told by the character Robbie. That feeling is one of knowing that I had just heard a story that seems to have some sort of meaning to it but with no closure. I’m really unsure what it is that I just watched and have a feeling that I will have to watch it again while paying a little more attention to some of the stories that are being told and then I might get what this movie is about. At first I thought the movie was going to be about Father Billy learning to tell parables that would be deep while relating to religion by going on this trip with a man that he hadn’t seen since high school and who is basically his polar opposite. Maybe this is what happened but by the end of The Catechism Catacylsm Father Billy seemed only to change in the way of how he told his parables to his flock.

I may not quite understand what the meaning of this movie was supposed to be but I can say it kept my attention during the whole time. This movie is so simply made with the whole story focused on the interaction of these two guys as they tell each other these crazy stories with no endings. It’s supposed to have some sort of religious meaning or be a satire of religion but it’s well hidden. At one point I get the idea that the two Huckleberry Finn (played by Ann Maddox) and Tom Sawyer (played by Koko Lanham) seem to be temptresses of some sort and Jim (played by Rico Comic) might be the devil, but I’m just not sure. By the way Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are two girls of unknown origins (they are Oriental) who speak very little English and seem to have lots of money and are on a trip to give freedom. But other than I have no clue who these girls were or even if they were real but I was really liking the musical scene at the camp site.
What was really good about The Catechism Catacylsm is that it took me on the journey along with the characters. I wanted Father Billy to have some sort of epiphany that would allow him to find himself and his inner story teller while at the same time Robbie would find his endings to the stories that he had to tell. It almost does this, I do go on the journey, I can see that Father Billy is about to discover something in himself, but it then just ends and I’m left with this feeling of going, uh what.

 
Best thing about this movie though was that I didn’t see anything coming. There’s no real way to know that the story was going to take that turn when Robbie realizes that he hasn’t seen the exit point off the river that they were supposed to take, or when the girls appear seeming to know what type of person both Father Billy and Robber are, but I really didn’t see it coming to the point of them listening to that weird glowing balls with the headphones on ending that it had. It’s rare that I get to sit here not expecting or knowing what is going to happen or how the movie is going to end and when I get it I love it. Getting this unexpected ending was both the story itself but also the acting of the both Steve Little and Robert Longstreet. Both of these guys do a really good performance in their characters making this feel like a journey that I was along on rather than just watching on a tv. Though I don’t really like the way the movie or didn’t end, I do like the journey it took me on and now when I watch it again maybe I can figure out exactly where this movie went the first time I watched it.