Caroline Friday is a novelist and award winning screenwriter with several film projects in development for both television and theatrical distribution. She is also a 2008 Kairos Screenwriting Winner for spiritually uplifting screenplays, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. Caroline currently serves as EVP of Sixth Day Media, LLC, a film finance and production company headquartered in the Atlanta area. She lives in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband and three children and can be found at www.carolinefriday.com.

The Perfect Stranger is a wonderful, low-budget, Christian film that is surprisingly smart, witty, entertaining, and deeply moving. Starring unknowns Jefferson Moore and Pamela Brumley, The Perfect Stranger tells the story of Nikki, a beautiful young woman who is having trouble balancing the demands of matrimony, motherhood, and career as a high-powered attorney. The film starts out with an early-morning argument with her husband, Matt, who has elected to go to a baseball game with his friend in lieu of spending a romantic evening at one of her favorite restaurants, Pepino’s. Her anger only escalates when he proposes that she spend the evening with some of their Christian neighbors who have made numerous suggestions that she attend church. Insulted, she sends her daughter out the door to school and huffs off to work.

At the office, Nikki proves to be just as mean and surly with her secretary and staff as she is with Matt. Matters don’t improve when she finds a mysterious engraved invitation on her computer keyboard inviting her to dinner at Pepino’s with none other than Jesus Christ. Convinced that the invite is Matt’s attempt to make amends, her mood softens in preparation for a wonderful, romantic evening with her husband.

Of course, the movie moves in a totally different direction when Nikki arrives at Pepino’s and is escorted to a table where an elegant, yet mysterious, stranger is seated. When he introduces himself as Jesus Christ, she scoffs but agrees to join him for a four-course meal.

Please note that this is not a typical Hollywood film by any stretch of the imagination, since 90 percent of what you see and hear from this point on is Nikki and Jesus at the dinner table,

eating food and discussing theology and doctrine. Sound boring? Yes, but it isn’t! How many times have you heard someone say, “If I could ask Jesus one thing, it would be . . .”? Well, in this movie, Nikki, the agnostic/atheist, asks Jesus every such question from “Aren’t all religions the same?” to “Don’t all good people go to heaven?” to “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” It is fabulous to see and hear a modern-day Jesus, in suit and tie, answer all of these questions with ease and comfort and with no trace of judgment or condemnation. The script is perfectly crafted so that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is presented as the only way to the Father, yet full of immeasurable, unconditional love. Ultimately, He wins Nikki’s heart (and the viewers’ as well), and she surrenders herself to Him.

I won’t give away anymore, other than to say there is one laugh-out-loud scene and two, if not three, significant hanky moments that left me touched yet uplifted. Sure, the quality was not Hollywood standard, nor was the structure and style, and yet it was a profound, memorable movie that has become one of my favorites.

You may have to make special effort to get a copy. It is available on Netflix, but do what it takes to get your hands on a DVD and watch it. Fortunately, my husband was blessed when he received a copy at a men’s retreat just a few months ago. This brother who gave it to him buys at least twenty copies per year and gives them away as Christmas gifts. A great idea! Not only is it wonderfully entertaining, but it is a powerful witnessing tool as well. I plan to show it to my Bible study group in a few weeks, and follow it with a discussion and study. And if God leads, we may show it to nonbelievers in our community.

See it for yourself and perhaps God will reveal to you how it can be used in your sphere of influence to advance the kingdom.