June Pell

+10 clout

Sep 5, 2026

I put this on late because the description sounded like it might be one of those gotcha documentaries that ends with everybody looking stupid, and I was half ready to hate it for that alone. Instead I got a movie that keeps trying to be sneaky and then keeps failing at being sneaky in the softest possible way. R. Scott Cooper and his wife Mary show up to this church small group with cameras rolling, planning some kind of exposé on how silly Christians are, and the whole plan just dissolves because the people keep being people. I kept waiting for the big gotcha moment that never quite arrives the way he wanted it to. Anyway. The group itself is a handful of couples who meet in living rooms and talk about whatever is actually happening that week—jobs, kids, money stress, somebody's parent going downhill—and they pray in that awkward half-finished way real people pray, not the polished movie version. Scott is filming everything, inventing reasons why he needs to point a camera at them, and Mary is more ambivalent about the whole ruse from the jump. You can see her starting to like these folks before he does. I rewound the bit where they're all laughing so hard about something dumb one of the guys said that somebody snorts, because the first time through I thought the sound was a technical glitch. It wasn't. They just actually laughed like that. (I over-write scenes like that; it was probably thirty seconds of ordinary noise and I made it a whole thesis in my head.) There's a stretch in the middle where Scott is still trying to shape the footage into the story he planned—Christians as hypocrites or cultish or whatever the pitch was—and the movie lets you feel how poorly that is going. The small-group people keep showing up with casseroles and terrible jokes and genuine worry when somebody's kid is sick. No sermons shouted at the camera. Just life happening in a circle of chairs. I got stuck on the scene after one of the couples opens up about a miscarriage they never really talked through. Everybody just sits there with it. No one rushes to fix the silence. Scott's face does this thing where you can tell the hidden-camera guy is realizing he has nothing snarky to cut to. I watched that part twice. First time I was distracted by the lighting, second time I actually heard what they were saying to each other. It's clumsy and kind of beautiful in the same breath. When the cameras come out and the group finds out they were being recorded for an exposé, the movie could have gone pure melodrama. It doesn't. There's anger—of course there's anger—and some people feel used, and Scott has to sit there and eat it. Mary is already halfway on their side by then. The forgiveness part is not tidy. Somebody says they need time. Somebody else just hugs him anyway because that's who they are. I kept expecting a big speech about "we're all sinners" that would let the filmmaker off the hook cleanly, but the movie mostly just lets the discomfort hang. (Maybe that's the point and I'm just restless when stories refuse to button up.) It doesn't pretend the betrayal was nothing. It also doesn't pretend these people are saints. One guy is still annoyed weeks later and says so. That felt true. Craft-wise it's uneven. Some of the comic beats land because the actors playing the group members feel like they wandered in from an actual Tuesday night. Other jokes feel written. The score sometimes swells like it's afraid you won't notice the grace if it doesn't underline it. Scott's arc from skeptic to... not fully converted, exactly, but chastened and maybe a little lonely for the community he mocked... is the engine, and it works better when the camera just watches him squirm than when the script explains it. Mary has quieter work to do and she does it well; you can track her shifting loyalty without a monologue. I sat through the whole thing on a weeknight with a half-cold cup of tea and somehow didn't check my phone much, which is rare for me with faith-based stuff. It's not slick. It knows it's not slick. What it keeps circling back to is that these people laughed hard and showed up for each other even after they learned the guy with the camera had been planning to make them look foolish. That lands harder than any of the planned punchlines. I don't know if I'll watch it again, but I keep thinking about the snort-laugh and the miscarriage silence and the guy who was still mad later. Ordinary mess. Unexpected grace. That was enough for me on a Tuesday.

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Guest 2b41
anonymous
Sep 8, 2026
A movie director goes undercover in a church to videotape a bunch of people. The theme of his documentary is to expose hypocrisy in protestantism. His goal is to inform and educate, but his boss has a more nefarious agenda. In the process of secretly recording interactions with members of the church, he and his wife become good friends with these people. Eventually, the plan begins to unravel. There is a lot of drama across the spectrum in 'Small Group'. If you are looking for a funny and inspiring movie about church and friendship, you will find a little bit of everything. The theme is fairly obvious: an agnostic family is on the fence about God. Eventually, they come to terms with the fact that their existential problems are too much to handle. Will they turn to God and their small group for guidance and support? Good stuff, albeit it's a bit all over the place, but cohesive enough to be entertaining and inspiring.
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June Pell
+10 clout
Sep 5, 2026
I put this on late because the description sounded like it might be one of those gotcha documentaries that ends with everybody looking stupid, and I was half ready to hate it for that alone. Instead I got a movie that keeps trying to be sneaky and then keeps failing at being sneaky in the softest possible way. R. Scott Cooper and his wife Mary show up to this church small group with cameras rolling, planning some kind of exposé on how silly Christians are, and the whole plan just dissolves because the people keep being people. I kept waiting for the big gotcha moment that never quite arrives the way he wanted it to. Anyway. The group itself is a handful of couples who meet in living rooms and talk about whatever is actually happening that week—jobs, kids, money stress, somebody's parent going downhill—and they pray in that awkward half-finished way real people pray, not the polished movie version. Scott is filming everything, inventing reasons why he needs to point a camera at them, and Mary is more ambivalent about the whole ruse from the jump. You can see her starting to like these folks before he does. I rewound the bit where they're all laughing so hard about something dumb one of the guys said that somebody snorts, because the first time through I thought the sound was a technical glitch. It wasn't. They just actually laughed like that. (I over-write scenes like that; it was probably thirty seconds of ordinary noise and I made it a whole thesis in my head.) There's a stretch in the middle where Scott is still trying to shape the footage into the story he planned—Christians as hypocrites or cultish or whatever the pitch was—and the movie lets you feel how poorly that is going. The small-group people keep showing up with casseroles and terrible jokes and genuine worry when somebody's kid is sick. No sermons shouted at the camera. Just life happening in a circle of chairs. I got stuck on the scene after one of the couples opens up about a miscarriage they never really talked through. Everybody just sits there with it. No one rushes to fix the silence. Scott's face does this thing where you can tell the hidden-camera guy is realizing he has nothing snarky to cut to. I watched that part twice. First time I was distracted by the lighting, second time I actually heard what they were saying to each other. It's clumsy and kind of beautiful in the same breath. When the cameras come out and the group finds out they were being recorded for an exposé, the movie could have gone pure melodrama. It doesn't. There's anger—of course there's anger—and some people feel used, and Scott has to sit there and eat it. Mary is already halfway on their side by then. The forgiveness part is not tidy. Somebody says they need time. Somebody else just hugs him anyway because that's who they are. I kept expecting a big speech about "we're all sinners" that would let the filmmaker off the hook cleanly, but the movie mostly just lets the discomfort hang. (Maybe that's the point and I'm just restless when stories refuse to button up.) It doesn't pretend the betrayal was nothing. It also doesn't pretend these people are saints. One guy is still annoyed weeks later and says so. That felt true. Craft-wise it's uneven. Some of the comic beats land because the actors playing the group members feel like they wandered in from an actual Tuesday night. Other jokes feel written. The score sometimes swells like it's afraid you won't notice the grace if it doesn't underline it. Scott's arc from skeptic to... not fully converted, exactly, but chastened and maybe a little lonely for the community he mocked... is the engine, and it works better when the camera just watches him squirm than when the script explains it. Mary has quieter work to do and she does it well; you can track her shifting loyalty without a monologue. I sat through the whole thing on a weeknight with a half-cold cup of tea and somehow didn't check my phone much, which is rare for me with faith-based stuff. It's not slick. It knows it's not slick. What it keeps circling back to is that these people laughed hard and showed up for each other even after they learned the guy with the camera had been planning to make them look foolish. That lands harder than any of the planned punchlines. I don't know if I'll watch it again, but I keep thinking about the snort-laugh and the miscarriage silence and the guy who was still mad later. Ordinary mess. Unexpected grace. That was enough for me on a Tuesday.
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Small Group

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