SOUL FOOD:

To see or not to see? That can be the question when a flood of films aimed at the holiday market washes into theaters at the end of November and in early December.

Unless visuals stand to be deeply diminished by my 26-inch-screen home theater, I usually opt to save my money and get films from NetFlix when they’re released on DVD.

Recently, though, I’ve been enticed to catch a trio of movies at local theaters.

I got a deluge of e-mails about “Bella” — most of them from Christians peddling it as a pro-life story. I was ready to wager this kind of publicity would bury the film. But it didn’t. Weeks after its release it’s still playing in plenty of theaters, the closest now being the Edwards Westminster 10.

Maybe it’s because it’s a great movie. It did win the People’s Choice Award (and a standing ovation) at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall.

Or maybe it’s because it stars Eduardo Verástegui. This former soap opera hottie and popular singer was dubbed “the Brad Pitt of Mexico” before he abandoned the roles to make a deeper commitment to his Roman Catholic faith after a season of spiritual reckoning.

Verástegui plays José, a one-time soccer star, who is now head chef at the upscale Manhattan Mexican restaurant owned by his hot-tempered brother Manny. José is sensitive and introspective, in part a result of his soccer career ending prematurely in an abject and tragic way.

His costar is Tammy Blanchard, who as Niña is a floundering waitress fired by Manny after she arrives late to work one time too many. Much of her tardiness, it turns out, is due to morning sickness.

She’s pregnant. José, angry at Manny for firing Niña, deserts the kitchen on the brink of a busy lunch rush and follows after her.

Without being a spoiler I can tell you this, since the film’s website does. It sums up the story this way: “In the course of a single day, [José] not only confronts his own haunting past but shows [Niña] how the healing power of love can help her embrace the future.”

That future ultimately doesn’t include “taking care of” her pregnancy as she first intended, hence the film’s reputation as a mouthpiece for the pro-life cause.

Before seeing the film I did something I rarely do: I read reviews. Frederica Mathewes-Green, an Orthodox Christian cultural critic, praised it.

Tom Long, film critic for the Detroit News, (who, for the sake of full disclosure, is also my brother-in-law) called it “a barely disguised anti-abortion tract…simple-minded, heavy-handed.” He didn’t outright advise you to save your money, but he did say, “As films go, ‘Bella’ is bunk.”

On the other hand, Mathewes-Green thought it was “always inviting to watch.” She found Blanchard “immensely believable” and “likable,” as an “ordinary person facing a heartbreaking situation.”

As Blanchard’s costar, Mathewes-Green thought Verástegui was “a good match.” The film’s “only flaw” dawned on her only toward its end, that “the characters just were never going to get any deeper than they are.”

I went to the theater wanting to like this film. We don’t, after all, get all that many stories about a reluctantly pregnant woman who discovers reasons to have her child rather than abort it.

But in spite of her change of heart Niña struck me as a shallow, self-indulgent boor. What had seemed like petty criticisms of the film, as it turned out, made too much sense.

Why did Niña choose to be late for work (yet again) in order to buy a home pregnancy test at a drugstore on her way to work? Rather than lose our job, wouldn’t you or I have done that after work instead?

“Bella” is too pat in places and too unbelievable in others. Spend your $10 on a ticket to “Lars and the Real Girl.”

My sister turned me on to this gem. I sat through it twice in one afternoon.

I’m not going tell you much more about the plot than my sister told me. You deserve to be surprised just as I was by its rare humor and its even rarer humanity.

Ryan Gosling is Lars Lindstrom in this comedy penned by “Six Feet Under” writer Nancy Oliver. Lars is agonizingly introverted, which troubles his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and especially his sister-in-law Karen (Emily Mortimer) — until he meets the girl of his dreams, Bianca, on the Internet.

Bianca is the daughter of Christian missionaries who died when she was an infant. She is also a life-size, anatomically correct doll.

When she arrives to visit Lars, he introduces her to Gus and Karen over dinner. And since he and Bianca are both very religious and unable to live in the same house without being married, he asks if Bianca might live in their spare bedroom.

Understandably, Gus and Karen don’t know what to think — or what to do. So they seek the help of a trusted family doctor, Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson).

Don’t worry about the doll. The film is rated PG-13. There are some fleeting references to sex but absolutely no sex in this film.

You can see it at the UA Marketplace in Long Beach and at the Regency Lido Theater in Newport Beach. You might want to bring tissues.

“Lars and the Real Girl” has displaced “Millions,” my favorite “feel good” movie, as No. 1. But more about that and “The Golden Compass,” the third film I recently took in, next week.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].