BEVERLY HILLS -- There are two lines in the final scenes of Saved! which hit just as the dark teen comedy tackling bigotry, teen pregnancy, homosexuality and infidelity reaches its frenetic high note at a Baptist high school prom.

"This is not a grey area!" screams actor Martin Donovan, playing a Bible-believing teacher dubbed "Pastor Skip," to his laid-back skater-boy son, played by Almost Famous actor Patrick Fugit.

"It's all a grey area!" shouts back Fugit.

First-time director Brian Dannelly, who penned the script with Michael Urban as a film school project, pulled from his own experiences attending a Christian high school in making the ensemble film featuring Jena Malone, Macaulay Culkin, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Heather Matarazzo and newcomer and Susan Sarandon-offspring Eva Amurri.

"That line came from a Christian youth rally where the pastor was saying, 'It's black and white, there are no grey areas,'" says Dannelly. "And the biggest sin or the aspect that certain fundamentalist groups attack is moral ambiguity, which is strange because I always feel like that's the most beautiful thing you can be as a human, to have tolerance and acceptance."

With highly controversial, religious-themed films like Kevin Smith's Dogma and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ having gone before it, Dannelly's little tale of a teen named Mary (played by Malone) who hides her pregnancy and starts questioning her faith is stirring up less controversy than it might have.

But before its May 28 release in the U.S. message boards were already full of posts with titles like "Mandy Moore in a blatantly anti-Christian film," "Gay Christians??" and "They're making fun of us again."

REM frontman Michael Stipe and his producing partner Sandy Stern, who were flooded with scripts after the success of 1999's Being John Malkovich, knew they needed recognizable names and people who were still teenagers to get Saved! made. With the exception of an unnamed actress who dropped out and Moore replaced at the last minute (without her, says Matarazzo, "this movie would have sucked") they managed to keep everyone aboard through a tumultuous three-year period when it seemed Saved! might not be made.

Production on Saved! shut down three years ago in Florida, after a group of funders failed to come through, though it was back up and running five months later.

The filmmakers insist they screened the movie for all sorts of groups, religious, teen and otherwise, and that the reception has been good. But fundamentalists are unlikely to be amused with the film's depiction of people with fervent faith as villains and the ones who ask the questions as heroes.

A quick web search digs up several sites which criticize the film while inadvertently driving home some of its wider arguments.

'BLASPHEMOUS'

In just one, Dr. Terry Watkins of Dial-A-Truth Ministry calls the film an "irreverent, sick, blasphemous comedy" produced mostly by "homosexuals and homosexual advocates."

"I think anyone of faith, who is secure in their faith, will be able to have a sense of humour about themselves and be able to see something like this and laugh at it," counters Stipe. "Because we're not laughing at them either."

Moore, who was hired and on the Vancouver set within seven days after another actress dropped out, saw the intolerant zealot she plays as any other typical teenage girl who is struggling to find her own identity.

"I think it was really important to us to not make Hilary Faye like a caricature," says Moore. "But I always remember the girls who were popular in middle school and high school and they were really over the top about things."

TEEN CONSULTANT

In an effort to be as realistic as possible, the filmmakers hired a teenage Christian consultant who was on set throughout the month-long shoot to make sure the actors made the proper gestures in their rapturous moments. They also took the cast to several Christian rallies so they could see first-hand the world they were hired to portray.

Culkin, who plays the put-upon wheelchair-bound brother of Moore's character, says at first he thought the new-wave Christian movement was a cute premise for a teen movie.

That was until he joined Dannelly and the other actors at a 30,000-strong Christian rally/rock concert. Culkin says he realized that world really does exist, and it is "10 times bigger" than Saved! suggests.

"I remember we were walking out of this thing and there were all these people picketing and passing out pamphlets, and they were Christians," he said. "They were fundamentalists saying that Christian rock music is wrong. It was so funny to me that Christians are picketing each other, so what makes us think we can get away with this movie, without someone being offended at least by the outside of it?"

Malone, who first appeared in the disturbing 1996 film Bastard Out of Carolina and went on to appear in Contact, Donnie Darko and The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys, says she signed on to Saved! after finding the script both smart and subversive.

"As a 19-year-old and an audience member, I have never seen these issues addressed in a film about young people -- young people really questioning their spiritual beliefs and making sure that they're working for them and not against them. It's so funny and the fact that you can use humour to ask important questions."

Stern and Stipe say they are actually grateful to films like Dogma and Passion because they paved the way while stealing some critics' thunder and venom.

"This is in 2004 a controversial film," wonders Stipe. "How crazy is that?"

MEET THE STARS

Mandy Moore says outside all the movie and singing and "stuff" that is her current career, life is really quite dull.

No rivalries with fellow singer/actresses like Hilary Duff, no night-after-night clubbing, like 17-year-old it girl Lindsay Lohan.

So far Moore has landed in the tabloids only for changing her hair from blonde to brown and breaking up her squeaky-clean romance with tennis star Andy Roddick. These days, her idea of a big night is dinner and a movie, thank you very much.

"I find that whole life boring. You have to go to the parties sometimes and say hello and shake hands, you get a little taste of all that, music and people and all the craziness and chaos that goes on," she says. "But that's not fulfilling, that's not exciting for me."

Moore realizes her one tale of childhood rebellion -- when as a child she unwrapped several of her Christmas presents and then put them back under the tree -- is pretty "cheesy."

But not so her plans to fill some of her downtime with studies. Moore, now 20, says she's tired of reading magazines and going on the Internet. She lists American history, fashion, musical theatre and cooking as areas she hopes to explore. Oh, and she'd also like to become a pilot, just like her dad.