When the film declared it was executive-produced by God, we at AMP knew we were in for a gruelling ride. Don’t get us wrong, we don’t have any problem with religion, barring any dogma that stems from it, but something about I’m in Love With a Church Girl really put us off. Perhaps it was the middling performances of Adrienne Bailon, of Cheetah Girls fame, and Ja Rule, of Fyre Fest fame. Maybe it was the half-thought-through script, written by the pastor tjat this film is based on. It’s possible that we haven’t actually watched a shitty movie like this in several months. Whatever the case, this film was a slog at nearly two hours of disappointment; especially when we realized that it could’ve been neatly summed up in about 200 words.

The film follows Ja Rule as Miles Montego, a former drug lord turned event promoter. Miles falls in love with Vanessa, played by Adrienne Bailon, immediately making us think I’m In Love With A Cheetah Girl. Vanessa is a humble Christian church girl — though the Christians in this film prefer “people of faith” — who instantly falls in love with Miles as well. Thus begins Vanessa’s mission to convert Miles to Christianity, in the only way devout Christians know how: repeatedly and aggressively pressuring him to join the religion despite his concerns, and recruiting his close confidants to help ensure his compliance. Infuriatingly, the constant pressure wears him down and Miles starts studying the Bible with Vanessa. Miles also expresses an interest in casual sex at this point, while Vanessa says she wants to wait until marriage. This is what passes for drama within this movie.

Luckily for the viewer, pretty soon Miles’s mom dies (don’t worry about it, we sure didn’t) and furthers the plot. Miles proposes to Vanessa and his life finally seems to be turning around. That is, until Vanessa gets into a car accident and ends up in a coma. This really seems like the final straw for Miles — well, that, and all of his former drug-dealing friends get arrested and he’s nearly implicated in their crimes. But did you know that God works in mysterious ways? Vanessa wakes up from her coma and Miles isn’t arrested. His friends are, though, and he tries to convert them later. Is it in bad taste? Probably, but we digress.    This film sucks. It’s too long for its own good, and since we had to watch it with ads, it sucked even more than it did on its own. The real issue with the film is that nothing happens. The film tries to add some intrigue with a B-plot about Stephen Baldwin — Alec Baldwin’s somehow more racist brother — trying to arrest Ja Rule’s character and having a change of heart when he sees Miles’s conversion to Christianity. Despite even this microscopic bit of intrigue, the film is a pain to get through. We wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone, not even devout Christians, honestly. It’s just such an in-your-face parody of what Christianity represents to most people. Maybe with a better script, and a less in-your-face approach to faith, this movie could’ve been something that actually left an impact. Instead, the only thing it left was a bad taste in our mouths and a desire to watch Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed again.