When one watches a movie with this title, it goes without saying that getting upset at concepts and presentation of religion and faith would be pretty stupid. It would be equally foolish to expect the movie to follow one's personal beliefs. So there are two bits of poor-review nonsense hopefully set out of the way, and we can get to the movie itself.
This starts out excellent: interesting premise, good acting, good characters. Both lead actors really do an excellent job in their roles and up until about halfway through the first of three "interviews", it holds up. But that's when the foundation starts crumbling and a movie that had great potential begins stumbling along.
It's not that the story line isn't interesting. There's a plot twist that is very well done and really adds to the story. It's too bad that degree of ingenuity didn't continue throughout the film.
One hopes that a presentation like this would present a bit of wisdom, wit and at least enough philosophy to make one think on important subjects. The problem is this film skirts around the important subjects with trite and incomplete answers. Parts of the movie were absurdist from a faith standpoint. Fortunately there weren't many such issues. Just the opposite in fact, as the writers and director seemed almost afraid to tackle the tough questions . They asked them... but repeatedly failed to provide any semblance of an answer.
About halfway through the film I got so fed up with "God" answering questions with a question that I wanted to strangle the writers, and some might consider it justifiable homicide.
In the end the story line fizzled out, we were (predictably) left with more questions than answers, and the theme of the show seemed to slowly teeter and face-plop. At the beginning I had high hopes, but by the end all such hope had been abandoned and we were left with the reality that this was simply another pretentious, goes-nowhere-really thud film. I wish that were not the case; would that the story had lived up to the actors potential and the message have worked-- or more accurately, that there had been a message. That's not something I can discuss without spoilers, so I'll just say that this film falls considerably short of it's potential... and that we've seen better such films. Several better such films.
This movie is exactly what it presented itself to be... and sadly not much more to challenge one's thinking beyond that. But to the actors: good job, really. Wish they'd have had better material to work from... and a far better purpose to the film.
This starts out excellent: interesting premise, good acting, good characters. Both lead actors really do an excellent job in their roles and up until about halfway through the first of three "interviews", it holds up. But that's when the foundation starts crumbling and a movie that had great potential begins stumbling along.
It's not that the story line isn't interesting. There's a plot twist that is very well done and really adds to the story. It's too bad that degree of ingenuity didn't continue throughout the film.
One hopes that a presentation like this would present a bit of wisdom, wit and at least enough philosophy to make one think on important subjects. The problem is this film skirts around the important subjects with trite and incomplete answers. Parts of the movie were absurdist from a faith standpoint. Fortunately there weren't many such issues. Just the opposite in fact, as the writers and director seemed almost afraid to tackle the tough questions . They asked them... but repeatedly failed to provide any semblance of an answer.
About halfway through the film I got so fed up with "God" answering questions with a question that I wanted to strangle the writers, and some might consider it justifiable homicide.
In the end the story line fizzled out, we were (predictably) left with more questions than answers, and the theme of the show seemed to slowly teeter and face-plop. At the beginning I had high hopes, but by the end all such hope had been abandoned and we were left with the reality that this was simply another pretentious, goes-nowhere-really thud film. I wish that were not the case; would that the story had lived up to the actors potential and the message have worked-- or more accurately, that there had been a message. That's not something I can discuss without spoilers, so I'll just say that this film falls considerably short of it's potential... and that we've seen better such films. Several better such films.
This movie is exactly what it presented itself to be... and sadly not much more to challenge one's thinking beyond that. But to the actors: good job, really. Wish they'd have had better material to work from... and a far better purpose to the film.
