How many times did I roll my eyes while watching this film “adaptation” of G. K. Chesterton’s comic nightmare, my all-time favorite novel?
When I heard that it existed.
When I saw the ridiculous poster art.
When the protagonist was a priest.
The first sex scene, with the priest and the hooker at the altar.
When the hooker drugs the priest, steals the church’s renovation funds (kept on-site in cash), and induces him to burn down the church building.
When the priest is sent to the Vatican for excommunication.
When Vatican Special Forces has him infiltrate an anarchist group. (At least this was the first slight similarity to the book.)
When they crucify “Tuesday” and use his blood to write “a line from a poem by someone named Chesterton” on a Vatican wall before burning him alive.
The drug-induced pool orgy.
The Vatican-themed bondage club.
The time travel.
The Mussolini subplot that somehow proves the Vatican to be evil.
The second sex scene, between the excommunicated priest and the avatar of Satan.
More time travel.
The graphic autopsy scene.
The pornography the priest takes from the bar’s bathroom wall.
The continuing time travel.
When the priest says, “One delusional person is a psychiatric case. A group of them is a religion.”
When the priest is tricked into killing the Pope.
When it is revealed that the man who tricked him is actually God in bodily form.
When the Satan avatar resurrects herself and takes the priest on a car chase, followed by the God avatar.
When the God avatar kills the priest.
When it’s all revealed to be a Job-style bet between God and Satan.
When the credits ended, and I thought, “Wow, I watched that.”
When I read over this list.
Thank you for suffering through that on my behalf. Ew.