I saw an ad for this documentary on TikTok and knew I had to watch. I recognized the Falwell name but was unaware that any of this occurred. I had a vague recollection of some type of scandal but that was it. The documentary does well laying out the way GianCarlo was drawn into their world and the repercussions of that decision. This was a good documentary, but the background music was too loud for me. The music would stop for a moment then start again. It would have been a 9, or maybe a 10, but the music was distracting. It is probably just me and this won't stop me from recommending this doc to others, but I had to pause frequently and restart. I finally turned the volume down and watched with subtitles.

This documentary would have been an easy 9 or 9.5 with just concentrating on the story. However, even though I agree with the politics of the story outside of the Falwells, at times it is too heavy handed and not exactly related to the story. In addition, somebody forgot to edit the loud music that makes it hard to understand what is being said towards the end of the movie for many minutes.. What the heck happened to the editors?

The story itself is extremely well done. Giancarlo Granda comes across well, controlled, and very sincere for the most part. His sister helps to give us some background about who her brother is and how this ordeal affected him, which is important. You see the power of this middle aged woman on a horny 20 year old, as Granda himself confesses. You see what appears to be an obsession with him. He had been a quiet teenager, and now he was getting all this attention. Soon he was being brought into a real estate deal, and becoming more sexual with Becki Falwell as time went on. Jerry himself would watch or have sex with his wife after Giancarlo. A soap opera couldn't have done it better than this real one.

Things fall apart when the real estate deal goes bad, and then Granda starts feeling used, and when he tries to break away, he sees what hold the Falwells have on him. He also sees the hypocrisy of the strict rules that students must follow at Liberty U, and yet the President and his wife are having orgies with no penalty. We see Falwell endorsing Trump, with reasons that may have to do with what was known about the Falwell's affair.....

This is a story well told, teaching us about the dangers of mixing hypocritical religion, power, deception, and sex.

As "God Forbid" (2022 release; 109 min) opens, we are introduced to Giancarlo Granda, a Cuban-American who comments "If I knew what would've happened, I'd walked away." We then go to "March 12, 2012" and Becki Falwell, wife of Christian evangelican leader Jerry Falwell Jr., picks up a 20 yo pool boy at a Miami hotel. It isn't long before they start a torrid affair, with Jerry Jr. Looking on (literally). At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from longtime director Bill Corben ("537 Votes"). Here he reassesses the turbulent life and times of Jerry Falwell Jr. And his wife Becki as the leaders of Liberty University. The documentary is basically a 2-in-1: on the one side there is the salacious personal hypocrisy of the Falwells in how they practice their "Christian values" or the lack thereof (comments Giancarlo's sister: "They are not the good Christians they portray themselves to be"), and then there is the political fallout from the Christian evangelicans' wholesome embrace of Trump(ism) : in both 2016 and 2020, about 80% of Christian evangelicans voted for Trump, who of course doesn't have an ounce of "Christian values" in his body, the Big Loser and Liar-In-Chief that he was and still is. In the middle of all this is Giancarlo Granda, who was just 20 years old when all of this started a decade ago. I found this documentary to be surprisingly well done.

"God Forbid" started streaming on Hulu earlier this week, and I just caught it last night. If nothing else, watch this as it exposes (again) the utter and sheer hypocrisy of Christian evangelicans who preach one thing and then have no problem supporting a man who literally lies every single day, cares for no-one but No. 1, and then for good measure tried overturning the 2020 presidential election results in every which way, including staging a (failed) insurrection on January 6. But hey, he did appoint 3 justices to the Supreme Court, so it's all good! Of course don't take my word for it, so check out "God Forbid" and draw your own conclusion.