God's Not Dead

Year: 2014
Genre: Drama
Director: Harold Cronk
Stars: Kevin Sorbo, Shane Harper, Dean Cain, Cory Oliver, Cassidy Gifford, Trisha LaFache, Hadeel Sittu
Production: Pure Flix Productions

They say that good art challenges its audience. It imposes something on the viewer or the listener and gets them to ask questions about their world. Sometimes the questions we as the audience ask ourselves are deceptively simple like: can you capture real human experiences in a painting or in a piece of music. Sometimes they're overtly political or social in nature like: are you willing to live in a post-modern consumerist culture or are you willing to give up essential freedom for security. Bad art however, if you can even call it art; is just propaganda. Such is the case for God's Not Dead, a plodding, ill-conceived trifle of a movie that runs the danger of being taken seriously.

The movie begins with a jumble of different characters all getting up and going to work/university/life chores to the sound of twangy country pop. You can tell which characters are Christians because they're the ones who are smiling and happy to be alive. We're then introduced to the various threads of, let's call them plots in fast procession. The main one focuses on Josh (Harper) a college freshman who butts heads with his philosophy professor (Sorbo). Professor Hercules tells everyone in class to write "God is dead" on a piece of paper so the class can dispense with religious philosophy. Anyone who refuses will not only force the class to discuss the topic but they will have to present their arguments to the class on why they believe God is real. Also in the mix is a Muslim woman (Sittu) with a crisis of faith, an atheist blogger who has a crisis of non-faith, a preacher who just wants his car to start and a Chinese exchange student who is drawn to Josh's pronouncements. The professor and his wife (Oliver) seem to be in for conflict too but perhaps I'm front loading this boat a bit too much.

Mostly the professor and his wife aren't fans of these guys

Stylistically, this movie is not well developed. The stagecraft here is just bad with terrible blocking decisions, lazy camera work and a host of semi-professional actors left to talk at one another with little or no interesting action. Sorbo is easily the best actor in this entire mess but even he cannot escape moments of un-cinematic 180 conversations. The only time I noticed dynamic camera shots were in the opening credits and the last five minutes of the movie.

I suppose the set-design could have been worse

Though the direction and cinematography is nothing compared to the writing which fits each character into a neat little Crash-like box mistaking stereotype for character. Nearly every non-white character is treated with a disrespect bordering on racist. Poor Chinaman and his over-valuing of family honor. If only he could be free to make his own decisions like an American can. Oh poor Muslim girl, if only she could escape her wrongheaded, borderline abusive father and be free to convert to Christianity like an American can. Oh and lest we forget the Rafiki-esque African reverend who seems to think watching a man die on the street is evidence of a "good day".

Which brings me to the most egregious example of stereotyping in God's Not Dead, the angry atheist caricature. There are three people who are kindly enough to be the strawmen for this exercise in choir-preaching; the aforementioned blogger, the professor and a man I can only describe as the douchiest guy in the world. The blogger is brought to the good side when she is diagnosed with cancer. Before then she lived a life of selfish indulgences which included casual sex, environmental rebel-rousing and picking on red-blooded Americans like Willie Robertson and kin. Meanwhile the professor is revealed to be not an atheist but an anti-theist who denies God's existence because of something devastating in his past. Then there's the douche, who is just a douche. There's no explanation, he's given no motivation, he's just a big a--hole towards everyone he meets. So based on the very clearly drawn lines in the film, all atheists are jerks who if pressed, will acknowledge there is a God but refuses to believe because life is unfair.

Killing Jesus; now in 3D

I could fit multiple column inches going over point by point, destroying every little wrongheaded detail of this shrill piece of propaganda but I won't. Honestly, ranting about how awful this movie any further would be like beating an injured child. Christians, like all walks of life need to demand more of their art than just ham-fisted messages that reinforce a simple, whitewashed, easily-refutable worldview. Complexity is a good thing, especially when it comes to characters and their deeply held belief systems and I would welcome a movie that acknowledges that. For now though Christians will have to settle for a movie who only pushes its audience to ask one question: did I really pay money for this?

Final Grade: F