An excellent riff on the usual teen comedy, a stellar cast led by the adorable Jena Malone lobs some smart bombs at the usual Christian targets (hypocrisy, textual contradictions, Jesus’ Aryan makeover) and never fails to hit its targets. Though there are plenty of wicked one-liners, such as one about bombing abortion clinics, the film is all heart, building toward the final showdown in which the comedy of errors is put right, God’s back in his heaven, and all’s right in the mall.

The film’s essential sweetness is so winning you forget the fact that the filmmakers have tackled and resolved some serious problems with a heaping dose of pure cane sugar. Malone and Patrick Fugit make a delicious item, and Martin Donovan is sufficiently uptight, but the gem of the movie is Eva Amurri, Susan Sarandon’s daughter. Cast as the rather improbably enrolled Jewish scapegoat, Amurri sizzles in every scene she’s in, knocking about with a sexy steeliness that would have worked better in a movie much tougher than this one. She is so much livelier and voracious than the other kids, it’s no wonder she takes a shine to Macauley Culkin’s wheelchair-bound outsider. One half imagines her devouring the ruby-lipped waif, tires and all.

Set against her rawness is a crabby Mandy Moore, who holds her own as a confused socialite who reads Cosmo and Luke with equal zeal. Back to Malone: the true revelation in this film is her acne. Never before has a leading lady in a teen comedy been allowed to show off so many zits and, oddly enough, this surprisingly charming authenticity cements Malone’s place as the most genuine young actress working in movies today.