Finally got around to seeing "God's Not Dead" this evening. I knew that I was going to see it because I usually make a point of seeing most of (or nearly most of) the Christian produced/themed movies...among them: "Left Behind" and "Fireproof" and "Facing The Giants" and "Courageous." Plus at least a few more that don't come to mind at the moment. The one thing that seems to be common to all of these films is that they tend to be, and I will be charitable here, unpolished. The acting tends to be second or third rate, the scripts are not particularly clever, the production values are weak and the direction is usually uninspired. Which is not to say that Christian themed movies have been awful, they just haven't been great. Which is too bad because the messages that these films attempt to deliver are, of course, good.
Producing a Christian themed movie is, obviously, not easy. Producing any movie at all isn't easy. It merely looks easy to the neophyte or layman. One of the universal truths in life is that a professional, a master craftsman or performer, is able to make what he does look easy when the fact is that it isn't. An example: We all drive cars (or most of us do) and because of that it's a pretty short leap to the mistaken conclusion that being a race car driver is not all that difficult. Which is utter nonsense. I won't go into the reasons why it's nonsense but it is. Perhaps the notion that making a good movie is not a big deal comes from the rather recent innovation of cheap but high quality camera phones...anyone can be a film maker with an iPhone, I suppose.
I say all this because it has been my hope for longer than I can remember that someday someone will make a high quality Christian themed movie...one that will have universal appeal and therefore attract an audience outside of its most obvious target demographic. "God's Not Dead" is not that movie but it's the closest one yet to achieving that goal.
The movie starts out with an absolutely great hook: A Christian student is faced with the easy path of denying his faith or the very difficult choice of defending it, his academic and possibly his professional future on the line in the process. The student refuses to deny his faith at the demand of his atheist professor and is then required to defend that decision. This idea would have made a great movie all by itself but unfortunately, at least as I see it, the producers make the mistake of spreading the screen time around in the form of interconnecting and intersecting characters and plot lines. We've seen this technique done before and it can be done very well. Films like "Love Actually" or "Crash" come to mind. And this brings me back to what I mentioned near the beginning of this post, that a truly gifted artist or craftsman can make things look easier than they really are. I wish that the makers of "God's Not Dead" could have stuck to just the one main plot line. If they had they could have developed the characters more and given the audience a little more cinematic meat to chew on I believe this could have been a very good film. Don't get me wrong, as I said earlier, this is the best of the Christian themed movies to date. I liked it. I just didn't like it a lot. I wanted to like it a lot and I wanted to say that it was a great movie. But I can't say that.
Now, all that said, it is worth seeing and you will probably enjoy it. I did.
Some plot and character detail comments:
If you have seen any promo stuff at all about this movie you will already know that Kevin Sorbo is the heavy as the atheist philosophy professor who demands that his freshman students dispense with belief in God on day one of his class. Sorbo is pretty good in this role, the script works for his character almost all the way through...he is totally believable playing the part of the intellectual snob college academic who could not possibly care less about anyone whom he considers to be mentally beneath him. He, like the global warmists, has a completely closed mind to anything that challenges his world view. (Incidentally, Sorbo is a Christian...I did not know this) His character should have gotten a lot more screen time.
And of course, his opponent should have also gotten more time...this was supposed to be the meat of the movie. The Christian student who would not deny God is played by Shane Harper. Harper, who I had not heard of before, is (surprisingly) not a total unknown. He actually has a fairly extensive entertainment resume for a young person and handles his role quite competently. He, like Sorbo, is also a Christian. I cannot underemphasize my disappointment that Sorbo and Harper were not allowed to dominate this movie.
There were about a half a dozen or so peripheral characters with plot lines with varying degrees of success in the way that they intersected with each other and the main characters. Only one of them is recognizable, Dean Cain, and his character is woefully thin. Cain plays a douchebag attorney who cares for nothing and no one other than himself. But Cain's talent is completely wasted here. We learn very little about why he is a douche and his character does not change during the story. Kind of pointless.
Another character played by a total unknown female is Cain's girlfriend and she is likewise a complete douche. She is cast as an ultra left wing blogger/citizen journalist who thinks that it's clever to "ambush" her interview victims. She interviews Willie Robertson (who along with his wife do a quickie cameo as themselves) and would be completely unbelievable in the role were it not for far too many real life examples of her behavior which can be found on MSNBC at any given moment.
Another unknown actress is cast as the daughter of a sharia law fanatic. It is revealed about a third of the way in that she has converted to Christianity and I was seriously impressed that the film makers had the guts to show a very mild representation of what an islamofascist does to any woman who strays from sharia (he merely smacks her two or three times in the head and then tosses her out the front door...no stoning, burning or battery acid to the face). The movie would have been better without her character or plot line but since it was included at least they didn't overly sugar coat it.
There is also a Christian pastor played by mostly unknown (he has produced and acted in a small number of Christian themed movies), David A. R. White. White, unsurprisingly, produced this film.
Anyway..."God's Not Dead" is, in my opinion, the best Christian themed movie to date and is both watchable and interesting. Christians will enjoy it for obvious reasons and if non-Christians happen to view it they may find themselves challenged by the brief but stimulating presentation in defense of God's existence put on by Shane Harper's character.