“The Principle” Gets a Tepid Review in Variety

Outside the hothouse of St. Blog’s, the normal world looks at a boutique film about quack science made by a super-fringe Catholic apologist, shrugs, says “Weird”, and gets on with its day.  True believers (led by producer Rick DeLano himself) show up in the combox to shriek stuff about the Liberal Conspiracy and pose for their pictures as strangely preening St. Stephens celebrating the Feast of the ASCII Martyrs–as if the Fifteen Minutes of Fame and the Diocletian Persecution are somehow one and the same for them.  It’s all very creepy, yet hilarious, yet… yeah, creepy.  So endeth the career of the film that will CHANGE THE WORLD FOREVER!!!

I still have to wonder about the folks who sank a fortune into underwriting this strange project.  Are they the sort of people who have enough money to blow on boutique quackery that they are just glad it exists even though nobody outside their hothouse takes it seriously or will ever see it?  Are they the kind of Catholic (like DeLano) who take it as a badge of honor when sane people point out that it is junk science and junk theology, as though such critiques are the persecution Jesus foretold?  How do they square their previous claims that this film would herald the dawn of a new epoch in science and theology with the complete failure of that Barnumesque claim?  Do they imagine that they stand at the foot of the cross, rejected by the world yet looking forward, with the help of God to the Rosy Future in which the gospel of geocentrism covers the earth as the waters cover the sea?  Or is the whole pose of laughing persecution just an act for the sake of the Catholic suckers who are paying the bills and, once the money dries up, guys like DeLano will doff the martyr’s robes, skip town, and find some new suckers to grift?  Hard to say, but time will tell.  The ability of small sects devoted to delusion to rationalize every failure of The Vision is immense.  So I don’t discount any or all of these scenarios.

But I do wonder how much more money the financial backers of this silly project are willing to pour into it before it dawns on them that they are getting taken to the cleaners.  It will be interesting to see what happens should that pool of money dry up.  Will the sect divide into the True Believers soldiering on in pursuit of the Vision and the cynical grifters who saw in the sect a temporary source of income?  Hard to say.  But I don’t see it ending well, cuz at the end of the day, making movies like “The Principle” is, like all moviemaking, all about the benjamins, and the box office for “The Principle” has been miniscule.  I wonder if they will try to get it on Netflix in that niche that features ancient aliens, documentaries about moon landing hoaxes, and chin-pulling tv shows about the Nazi search for the Hollow Earth.  Maybe MST3K will pick it up for a Riff Trax second life.

Best part:  The Real Catholics who have devoted massive  energy to promoting this piece of bizarre junk at Church Militant TV are the same Authorities who look at a the work of a *real* Catholic evangelist like Fr. Robert Barron and do everything they can to slander him and destroy his work.  Smart.