"It's finally a well-made Christian movie," people said. "It's a faith-based family movie that gets its messages across without hitting you with it over the head," people said. "It's the best work Kevin Sorbo has ever done," people said. Well, it isn't. Whatever "What If" may be, what it is not is certainly any of the above.
And, frankly: I am hard-pressed to say what it really is and what the hell it wants (and I'm choosing my words deliberately here). What it quite possibly might be, is a vehicle to show you what excellent acting can do in order to carry along a crappy script set in scene by an uninspired director. Because although it is most definitely not the best work Kevin Sorbo has ever done (Andromeda, Hercules, Walking Tall, Avenging Angel, The Santa Suit anyone?), he does do a marvelous job here, congenially supported by Kristy Swanson and John Ratzenberger. But even the best acting can only accomplish so much.
The script is a mess - and a bad mess at that. Ben Walker leaves his home town for the big city, leaving behind his fiancée (why?) and his ministry calling (one may question how strong a calling this might have been in the first place) to take someone up on an offer for a business opportunity. 15 years later he is a successful investment banker, with a talent for merciless deals and a fancy for tailor-cut suits, expensive cars and beautiful women. We get the info that he's left his girl and his calling to fend for themselves, without ever throwing a look back. How some small-town theologian mutated into an investment banker no-one really knows. What's worse: no-one even seems to ask this question ever. Instead, the movie deals in easy messages: big city, fancy cars, uptown girls, nice clothes and general cleanness = bad, ugly houses in lower middle class neighborhoods populated by badly dressed, slightly dirty people with slightly slutty teenage daughters = good.
This is the enviable environment God chooses to drop Ben Walker in, after forcibly removing him from his upper class life on the fast lane. After a weird encounter with an angel masquerading as a mechanic that ends with a knock-out, he wakes up to being the longtime husband of Wendy (the girl he'd left many years before), the father of the said slutty teenage daughter (most woodenly played by the remarkably untalented Debbie Ryan) and another about 7-8-year-old, "supposed to be intoxicating sweet" one (Taylor Groothuis in an annoying cover-version of Shirley Temple) and the newly appointed pastor of a broke church and congregation. After much struggle and a lot of wise words from his very own, godly appointed personal angel, Ben Walker comes to like this new life and starts succeeding at it. Paradoxically, his success in this brave, new "white trash"-world is marked by him using the skills, talents and wisdoms he's developed in his big city, investment banking career.
As a result, the most predominant message of this most inspired work of art is: make lots of money, it can solve every problem you eventually might have.
At some point (somewhere midway through the dramatic finale) the creative minds behind all of this must have realized that something's not quite working out the way it should. In they threw a dying rich old man, who Ben conveniently puts back on track to God, thereby saving both "Scrooge's" and his own soul by it – for the sermon meant for the rich guy is, of course, also meant for himself, since the rich guy is nothing but a parabola of what Ben would end up as, were he to continue on the big city, big career road, blah, blah, blah In case we didn't get that, he gets to spell it out later in a discussion with his personal angel, who chooses right this moment to inform him that God has now decided that Ben has learned his lesson and may now return back to his old life. May? No. Must!!!
So presumably, the second message of What If is "after solving it all by throwing some money at the world, remember that God is a bit of a sadist who likes to toy around with the lives of mortals", in short: the kind of deity Hercules would have found worthy of some major ass-kicking.
Back in his old life, Ben then quickly reforms by answering God's call: he dumps his fiancée (apparently, God told him to save himself and the world, but rich, middle-aged beauties do not qualify to be among the ones deemed worthy of such endeavor), quits his job, throws some more money and luxury goods at hospital employees and parochial helps and rejoins the simple girl with a heart of gold he'd left many years ago – who apparently didn't build up anything resembling a life in those 15 years, because after a bit of "required" struggle, she generously decides to take Ben back.
Apparently, this constitutes the happy end of it.
The only redeeming quality of this entire, sordidly stupid affair lies in the terrific acting of its three main actors. It is so good, it makes you laugh and cry and feel along with them, in spite of being acutely aware of how embarrassingly poorly written and told a story this is, in spite of the poor technical quality of the camera work, the crappy score, the lame jokes, the bad sound, plainly said: of the really bad work everyone not named Sorbo, Swanson or Ratzenberger delivered on this project.
Sorbo, at least, got a Movietime Award out of it. He should have gotten an Oscar, just for making it through it all with his usual decency.
And, frankly: I am hard-pressed to say what it really is and what the hell it wants (and I'm choosing my words deliberately here). What it quite possibly might be, is a vehicle to show you what excellent acting can do in order to carry along a crappy script set in scene by an uninspired director. Because although it is most definitely not the best work Kevin Sorbo has ever done (Andromeda, Hercules, Walking Tall, Avenging Angel, The Santa Suit anyone?), he does do a marvelous job here, congenially supported by Kristy Swanson and John Ratzenberger. But even the best acting can only accomplish so much.
The script is a mess - and a bad mess at that. Ben Walker leaves his home town for the big city, leaving behind his fiancée (why?) and his ministry calling (one may question how strong a calling this might have been in the first place) to take someone up on an offer for a business opportunity. 15 years later he is a successful investment banker, with a talent for merciless deals and a fancy for tailor-cut suits, expensive cars and beautiful women. We get the info that he's left his girl and his calling to fend for themselves, without ever throwing a look back. How some small-town theologian mutated into an investment banker no-one really knows. What's worse: no-one even seems to ask this question ever. Instead, the movie deals in easy messages: big city, fancy cars, uptown girls, nice clothes and general cleanness = bad, ugly houses in lower middle class neighborhoods populated by badly dressed, slightly dirty people with slightly slutty teenage daughters = good.
This is the enviable environment God chooses to drop Ben Walker in, after forcibly removing him from his upper class life on the fast lane. After a weird encounter with an angel masquerading as a mechanic that ends with a knock-out, he wakes up to being the longtime husband of Wendy (the girl he'd left many years before), the father of the said slutty teenage daughter (most woodenly played by the remarkably untalented Debbie Ryan) and another about 7-8-year-old, "supposed to be intoxicating sweet" one (Taylor Groothuis in an annoying cover-version of Shirley Temple) and the newly appointed pastor of a broke church and congregation. After much struggle and a lot of wise words from his very own, godly appointed personal angel, Ben Walker comes to like this new life and starts succeeding at it. Paradoxically, his success in this brave, new "white trash"-world is marked by him using the skills, talents and wisdoms he's developed in his big city, investment banking career.
As a result, the most predominant message of this most inspired work of art is: make lots of money, it can solve every problem you eventually might have.
At some point (somewhere midway through the dramatic finale) the creative minds behind all of this must have realized that something's not quite working out the way it should. In they threw a dying rich old man, who Ben conveniently puts back on track to God, thereby saving both "Scrooge's" and his own soul by it – for the sermon meant for the rich guy is, of course, also meant for himself, since the rich guy is nothing but a parabola of what Ben would end up as, were he to continue on the big city, big career road, blah, blah, blah In case we didn't get that, he gets to spell it out later in a discussion with his personal angel, who chooses right this moment to inform him that God has now decided that Ben has learned his lesson and may now return back to his old life. May? No. Must!!!
So presumably, the second message of What If is "after solving it all by throwing some money at the world, remember that God is a bit of a sadist who likes to toy around with the lives of mortals", in short: the kind of deity Hercules would have found worthy of some major ass-kicking.
Back in his old life, Ben then quickly reforms by answering God's call: he dumps his fiancée (apparently, God told him to save himself and the world, but rich, middle-aged beauties do not qualify to be among the ones deemed worthy of such endeavor), quits his job, throws some more money and luxury goods at hospital employees and parochial helps and rejoins the simple girl with a heart of gold he'd left many years ago – who apparently didn't build up anything resembling a life in those 15 years, because after a bit of "required" struggle, she generously decides to take Ben back.
Apparently, this constitutes the happy end of it.
The only redeeming quality of this entire, sordidly stupid affair lies in the terrific acting of its three main actors. It is so good, it makes you laugh and cry and feel along with them, in spite of being acutely aware of how embarrassingly poorly written and told a story this is, in spite of the poor technical quality of the camera work, the crappy score, the lame jokes, the bad sound, plainly said: of the really bad work everyone not named Sorbo, Swanson or Ratzenberger delivered on this project.
Sorbo, at least, got a Movietime Award out of it. He should have gotten an Oscar, just for making it through it all with his usual decency.