Six months plus after the release of God's Not Dead and I have finally had the chance to see it. I have to say that I did not have high hopes for liking the film. I heard much the same as I heard before I saw Fireproof or Courageous. You know things such as, "For a christian film, it's really good." Whenever I hear that qualifying statement that the encapsulation of story, characterization, acting, and production quality is good for a Christian movie, I just cringe. I translate it as, well, it's still not going to be good, but it's not as bad as most of the ones you have seen already.
Great then! Let's watch it! So I did. I wrote the following notes on my phone: Merger(pronunciation), Mina and the old lady are not believable as family, the premise itself would never happen - at least not without protest, reporter is cliche', parked in front of a handicap space, church scene in time of trial/hardship - cliche', pastor looks shady, forced the scene of the kid going into the sister's room(poltergeistesque), breakup scene is insane, car scene, glad they showed the Muslim father in sorrow also, sister is not believable and the relationship with the professor is forced, Dean Cane is one dimensional, what man says "freshen up".
I never thought God was dead, but I do believe that the integrity of
Christian based story telling is. To be fair, maybe not dead, but
definitely in critical condition. This film just isn't good. I didn't want to have to come to that conclusion, but it is the only one I have. The premise itself is not believable. The purpose of a philosophy class is to discuss the questions such as the purpose of life, how we got here, the nature of the universe, etc. While there are some really jerky, condescending, intellectually snobbish professors, part of their job is to discuss with students the questions they have about this world. No chemistry professor would ban the periodic table from discussion. This question of intelligent design, metaphysical vs. physical, etc. are the elements that make up the periodic table of philosophy. The premise is forced. If the character of the professor were a real person, he wouldn't be teaching in any institution of higher learning worthy of charging a dollar for tuition.
Throughout the entire film the characterization is weak and one dimensional. The main character is good, the girlfriend is selfish, the pastor is struggling to find purpose, the reporter is jaded, the businessman is a jerk, the professor is condescending and angry. We get it! But what of the character arc for each actor. Evey scene, forced relationship, plot twist, and piece of dialogue was only there to get us to the end of the movie, which surprise, ends in the "put that in your pipe and smoke it" ending where every question ever raised against the Christian belief is somehow answered, and everyone's eyes are opened. Praise be! The blind will see. All this done while a montage, complete with a very long and unnecessary music video that justifies the presence of the Newsboys as headliners, plays out to wrap things up. Perhaps what can best summarize the characterization failings is that I only found the car rental guy to be believable as person I would meet in real life. He is in two or three scenes and was a refreshing presence. In the breakup scene in which the reporter tells the jerky businessman she has cancer, he gets mad because he just told her he made partner, and breaks up with her at the table. All the people I was watching the movie with laughed because even though there are people that are selfish, and would break up with someone when they are sick, it most often would not be done that quickly. No, beat, no inward struggle, no dialogue to pull it out, just well this is great, sorry you are sick, but I'm awesome and you are killing my mojo! For the sake of moving the story along, the writers chose to condense this to one scene and make it awkward to the point of being funny. Whenever you laugh at horrible news you know there is a massive disconnect.
This brings me to the execution of the characterization. Acting with an agenda in mind is most often, if not always, detrimental to the art of acting. Even people who play evil characters need to find some sort of reason to make them say their lines and do what they do. The actor needs to understand the character. When you can tell the characters who are meant to be evil are still being played by actors that want to help prove the point of the entire film instead of portray a character honestly, the whole thing will crumble like Milli Vanilli in a power outage. Even in Christian films the women's characters are given to beautiful women with less than stellar acting chops. Stop this! Watch British films, real actors, some gorgeous, some not, play characters that are believable. Hire good actors! And more that that, give the good actors, good lines and storylines.
The writers, producers, directors, actors, anyone who read the screenplay, saw the dailies, delivered food to the set, there are so many places this film could have been salvaged. Why are you wasting time with the Newsboys when you have characters to develop? Stop the save the world with one movie mentality. Make a really great movie about good characterization, acted out in a believable manner. Real everyday struggles and how we deal with them. Difficulties that don't always go away even when you believe in Jesus, these are the types of things that will get people to pay attention. And the reason is because we can believe that kind of story. We don't need to see the world's problems solved and wrapped up in a bow by the end of the film. When we want that, we'll go watch Full House.
People are by nature and design very complicated. If we want Christians and non Christians alike to relate to the movies we want them to see, we need to be real!
So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, or don't. But for the love of all, if you do, please portray it honestly and with integrity of storytelling.
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