Who know that both Hercules and Superman were Christians? huh.
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“God’s Not Dead” is the latest Christploitation movie to hit theaters, this time about a College Freshman faced with the dilemma of whether or not to stand up to his staunchly atheist professor bent on proving that God doesn’t exist. He of course decides to make a stand and you can probably guess what happens next. What you probably couldn’t guess is the next thing I’m going to say. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said it about a “Christian movie”.
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There’s some really good acting going on here. Now that doesn’t necessarily make it a great movie, but I have to admit I thought most of the acting in this was pulled off quite nicely. Who knows, maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, or maybe my expectations for faith based films have dropped so low that any iota of talent on display is now overwhelming. But I honestly thought the performances in this were really good. In fact lets just call it the best thing. Kevin Sorbo finds some good moments as the professor and Dean Cain is great as a greedy business man, but it’s actually the newcomers and unknowns around them that steal the show. Especially Josh Harper as the student at the center of it all. Pretty impressive stuff for literally the only acting job listed on his IMDB. There were a couple other things I liked too. For one, I thought the debate scenes between the student and teacher were genuinely interesting and handled well, and 2 I loved the way these stories were introduced, allowing us to discover the characters at a deliberate pace. The movie made a daring choice to cover a wide range of situations and people, but found a creative and even beautiful way to bring us into their stories. If only they could have ended with as much skill
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but unfortunately every single story we are introduced to ends in an annoying way. Some unrealistic, some overly preachy, some just outright ridiculous. I don’t want to give anything away but the way the God is/isn’t Dead debate finishes makes the classic movie slow clap feel like a lesson in restraint. And that’s the worst thing, the whole movie just doesn’t have enough nuance. It sees the people of this world in these very black and white ways which is not only unrealistic, but counter to what’s in the B-I-B-L-E (yes that’s the book for me). In the bible, the “bad guys” had good moments and the “good guys” had some of the worst moments in the book. This is especially obvious in the film’s portrayal of the angry atheist bent on destroying people of faith, He just becomes an unfortunate straw man in the film’s pursuit of proving a point. I also thought it was crazy how much of the movie seemed to be a commercial for the Christian Rock Band Newsboys, From T-shirts, to posters, to their more than a cameo appearance at the end. I tell you what, I’m not sure if the movie completely proves that God exists, but it sure does prove the Newsboys do.
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Overall, “God’s Not Dead” is another Christian movie that will likely only appeal to those who already believe. Even with some decent acting and production, the lack of well rounded storytelling keeps it at around a C+
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click here to see a review for the new muppet movie “Muppets Most Wanted” or the latest young adult novel craze “Divergent”. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best movie with God in the title ever”. Mine is one of the best movies ever made, and involves a horse that quite while it was a head.. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and please subscribe!