{"id":12094,"date":"2021-03-26T08:08:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T16:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kateohare\/?p=12094"},"modified":"2021-03-26T11:07:56","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T19:07:56","slug":"week-away-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kateohare\/2021\/03\/week-away-netflix\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix’s ‘A Week Away’ Is a Breezy Musical Romp — With Some God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Teens<\/a>
\u2018A Week Away\u2019\/Netflix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In the new musical A Week Away<\/em>, premiering Friday, March 26, on Netflix, a troubled teen \u2014 played by Kevin Quinn, who\u2019s a near-clone of High School Musical<\/em>-era Zac Efron \u2014 avoids juvie by being sent to a Christian summer camp. Is that even legal? Stop asking questions, unless the answer involves singing about God.<\/p>\n

Resting alongside Netflix\u2019s more, ahem, adult fare, is this frothy romp set to the tunes of various Contemporary Christian pop songs, only a couple of which I\u2019d heard before (my idea of Christian pop is U2 or Mumford & Sons).<\/p>\n

Kids sing, dance, mourn dead parents, fall in love, shoot each other in paintball, and manage never to get stung by bees, attacked by squads of mosquitoes or fall into poison ivy.<\/p>\n

And their hair always looks great.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t go to summer camp, so this wasn\u2019t a nostalgia-fest for me in that way, but I appreciated the shout-outs to John Hughes movies, especially to the perfection that is\u00a0Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The singing and dancing are pretty good, the acting\u2019s broad but acceptable, and it\u2019s squeaky clean (even if Netflix based its poster on the one scene where backlighting allowed you to see right through the female lead\u2019s summer dress, but they did obscure it a bit).<\/p>\n

Can you let the kids watch A Week Away<\/em>? Unless you\u2019re offended by girls in shorts, boys in truly appalling shorts, belching and some peeks of bare midriff, sure. There are a couple of heart-tuggy moments (but no dog, more\u2019s the pity), Not Zac Efron moodily strums a guitar, and the script neatly punctures some tropes of the teen-movie genre.<\/p>\n

And the lead girl characters are named Avery and Presley, because apparently, we don\u2019t do traditional girl names anymore.<\/p>\n

Nothing\u2019s going to turn me into a fan of Contemporary Christian music, but it\u2019s tolerable \u2014 and even good toward the end, where Michael W. Smith\u2019s Awesome God<\/em> gets intertwined with another song in a slick bit of multipart campfire harmony.<\/p>\n

Now, as I said, I haven\u2019t been to summer camp, so I sure haven\u2019t been to church camp. But, and correct me if I\u2019m wrong, there should be some church at church camp, or at least a Bible study. We don\u2019t get any of that here, but it would interfere with the whole happy-camper vibe.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no deep theology in A Week Away<\/em>, and while God gets name-checked frequently, Jesus is mostly kept offstage \u2026 except for a reference to \u201cJesus freaks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, it is one of the few times that His name wasn\u2019t taken in vain on Netflix.<\/p>\n

Thank Christ for that.<\/p>\n

The most remarkable thing about A Week Away<\/em> (official site here<\/a>) is that a faith-based film was not just acquired by Netflix, it\u2019s presented by Netflix \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t even star Dolly Parton<\/a> or is produced by Pharrell<\/a>. With no heavyweights behind it, this project made it on the merits, and we\u2019ll see if Netflix\u2019s gamble paid off.<\/p>\n