Saturday's Warrior

Saturday's Warrior is the story of the Flinders family -- a family of unspecified religious beliefs and their ups and downs with this darn life. It all starts in heaven. Heaven is a place where everyone wears colored spandex with silky, sheer flowy skirts or over-sized button-up shirts with stretch pants. It is also very foggy there. One lady runs the whole show- commanding people to climb to a platform where they evaporate. Here we meet the Flinder's children -- Jimmy, Pam, (like on The Office, but these are twins) Julie, Benji, the older sister, Ernie, the little red-headed girl, and Emily. We also meet Todd, Julie's one true love. And Wally and Elder Green -- endearing imbeciles who are going to save the world. Everyone sings and dances around in a way that is intense and yet, you just feel weird watching it.

Once we hit earth life, we discover that Jimmy is not as good as he was in heaven and that Pam is, gasp, in a wheelchair when her pre-earth live-long dream was to dance. Julie is in love with Wally! Ernie and the older sister despise each other. Emily is still in heaven, yet the little red-headed girl is the same age as she was in heaven so explain the age differential to me. And the dad is -- anything but this -- Marvin Payne! 

Jimmy has fallen in with the wrong crowd.  This inebriated, sports-car driving, workout-clothes wearing crew spends their time lounging about and talking about tough world topics like over-population. So deeply do they feel about the fact that there aren't enough resources to go around that the main macho guy sings a little ditty about it. It's pretty much the coolest scene in the whole movie. 

Pam tries to save Jimmy by being perpetually cheerful, also by being perfect, and by helping Jimmy understand that stars don't all shine at once. But Pam's got her own little set of troubles -- her wheelchair makes her terminal, apparently.

Julie sends Wally off to save the world (which he isn't very good at) and is so anxious to sew that she drops Wally and almost marries this other guy. Her mom's advice when Julie tells her parents that she can't through with the marriage? "But Julie, the wedding's in three days." At this point you wonder if Julie will turn around and say, "Oh, you're right, Mom. What was I thinking? I'll just marry someone who is so not Todd, my one true love, who I promised myself to in heaven!" You wonder if her mother was ever in love. 

On Jimmy's birthday everyone gives him gifts. His parent's gift? Another kid. What? You couldn't have gotten him a soccer ball? Jimmy's steamed (soccer ball!) about his parents eating up all the world's resources so his dad smacks him one and Mom goes, "Oh, oh." Jimmy storms off on some spring break adventure with the macho guy and his crew where they sing an environmental number about a summer of fair weather. Jimmy runs into Todd, Julie's one true love, and Todd knows that Jimmy's non-denominational belief system -- which Jimmy refuses to talk about -- is the answer to all his problems. In a really surreal scene, Todd appears in Julie's room and she in his park. Also, Julie's mirror, doesn't have any glass.

While on spring break Jimmy finds out that Pam died. The moment of reckoning. What's a guy to do. After four and half minutes of inner turmoil, Jimmy decides to go back to his family and drop the macho guy and his crew. 

Julie goes to meet Wally as he comes home from saving the world. Turns out he brought Todd home with him. Julie and Todd's eyes meet, and Wally's story of true love becomes a sequel about him getting a girl that he didn't really want in the first place. Todd whisks Julie away, somewhere.

Jimmy is there to welcome little Emily into the world in what has to be the fastest birthing in history. It's a family show, so you have to wonder if it was a ad-lib or in the script -- "Bob, you did this to me!" yells Mom. Jimmy holds little Emily in his hands and knows that everything is as it should be.