Father Stu (2022) on Netflix
Stuart Long, an amateur boxer from Helena, Montana, moves to Southern California to try acting. To win over Carmen, a Sunday school teacher, the agnostic agrees to be baptized.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb6.5/1036,779 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes42%
Trailer
Plot summary
Stuart Long is an amateur boxer in Helena, Montana, at odds with parents who turned away from religion after his brother died. He heads for Southern California to try acting, takes a job in a grocery store and hopes the move leads somewhere. An arrest for drunk driving and an attempt to take his father's truck for an audition mark his early days there. At the store he meets Carmen, who teaches Sunday school at a Catholic parish, and she will not date him unless he is baptized. Stu, long an agnostic, signs up for instruction at the parish, where he meets Ham and Jacob, two men preparing for the seminary. After the baptism he and Carmen begin seeing each other.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Father Stu (2022)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mark Wahlberg first heard about Stuart Long over dinner with two priests, announced the project in 2016 with screenwriter David O. Russell, and ended up putting "millions and millions of dollars" of his own money in, largely because the shoot ran long and the music rights cost.
- To play Long, Wahlberg deliberately put on 30 lb in six weeks by eating up to 7,000 calories a day.
- The language is unusually coarse for a faith-based film, and Wahlberg said he was at first barred from shooting a church scene because of it. He defended it as the contrast between Long's life before and after his conversion, and Bishop George Leo Thomas, who ordained the real Father Stu, praised the film.
- Stuart Long's parents took part in the production, alongside bishops, priests and laypeople who had known him. The family said his father was portrayed as harsher than he really was, but the father backed the film anyway, saying it did not matter how he came across as long as the message was to have faith and endure.
