Everybody meets a Hilary Faye — the Bible-thumping teen terror of Brian Dannelly’s “Saved!” — at least once in their lives. Played with perfect apple-
cheeked piety by pop songstress Mandy Moore, Hilary Faye is the sort of beaming tyrant who delights in her own purity and never misses an opportunity to remind non-Christians that they are, in fact, going to hell.

When a classmate at her all-Christian high school returns from a missionary tour abroad, Hilary Faye can barely contain herself. “Which country has the worst heathens?” she squeals.

Though sharply drawn and oft-times funny, Hilary Faye is just a few decibels overstated, too. In his determination to villainize the character and enshrine her as a symbol for all that is intolerant and small-minded in the world, writer/director Dannelly shoots past his target and plunges into territory that feels repetitive, cumbersome and stridently anti-religious.

If only he could have quit while he was ahead. A “Heathers”-style dark comedy about clique rivalry, parental cluelessness and down-home evangelical hypocrisy, “Saved!” also stars Jena Malone as Mary, a well-meaning Baptist teenager who undergoes a crisis of faith when she experiences an unwanted pregnancy.

Mary’s strong first-person narrative and Dannelly’s knowing wordplay generate scalpel-sharp satire in the opening act, particularly when Mary — mistaking her Latino pool man for Jesus — has a vision that compels her to force sex on her boyfriend to “cure” him of his latent gayness.

Dannelly and co-writer Michael Urban smartly take aim at the various high-value targets that populate the ultra-conservative Christian youth scene, from the spiffy clothes ("They all look like NASA employees," Mary observes) to the energetic youth pastor (Martin Donovan) who dorkily co-opts MTV culture to "get through" to the kids. "Who's ready to get your Jesus on?" he intones, like some unholy hybrid of Jimmy Swaggert and Dr. Dre.

Unfortunately, something happens to "Saved!" when Mary finally gets wise, pitting her against Hilary Faye and straining her relationship with her widowed mother (Mary-Louise Parker).

The movie loses its strong satirical voice, the laughs dry up, and Dannelly seems to abandon any pretense of ironic evenhandedness, casting his lot squarely with one camp of characters.

"Saved!" is redeemed somewhat by its fresh and likable cast, including a reconstituted Macaulay Culkin as Hilary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother and Eva Amurri as a rebellious outsider who befriends Mary, somewhat improbably, in her moment of need.

Blessed with the same sleepy-eyed allure as her mother, actress Susan Sarandon, Amurri slides into the role of the resident bad girl with appalling ease, heaven help us all.