The Christian Blues: Blue Like Jazz takes its sermon to the liberals

Don Miller does not like jazz. Despite his fondness for John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” this evangelist stick in the mud can’t stand the genre because it “doesn’t resolve.” This is odd, considering Coltrane’s masterpiece is renowned not only for its perfectly balanced movements, but the fact that it was his “humble offering to God.” In writing his semi-autobiographical novel, Blue Like Jazz, Don Miller had a similar intent. Yet its film adaptation, which is playing in Evanston this week, is more bland than it is transcendent.

Don (Marshall Allman) is a devout but nonaggressive Southern Baptist poised to attend a local Christian college when his mother violates one of the Lord’s commandments so flagrantly he impulsively decides to attend the ultra-liberal Reed College, where his hippie father has enrolled him.

Part coming-of-age story, part college-slice-of-life, part crisis-of-faith, the story that plays out over the course of a school year cannot decide what it wants to be. For me, the best part of the film is watching the crazy hijinks of the ultra-liberals, such as the diapered and caped “Tuba Band,” or a coordinated “robot invasion” of a chain bookstore to protest corporate thought control. It is almost disorienting to observe a college experience for which the focus is on personal growth and individuality instead of GPAs and