This "movie" plays, in all respects but camera steadiness, like a random assortment of home recorded skits. This impression is amplified by the fact that 80% of the movie is set inside the main family's home. Here is a short list of bad things about this movie, from the perspective of a typical movie watcher:
1. Awkward Scene Transitions Like I said in the intro, it really does feel like each scene is its own skit, with very little relation to those surrounding it. As such, most of the movie's ideas go completely undeveloped in its ninety minutes.
2. Random Jumps in Time It really is just that; every 20 minutes or so, there appear three words on the screen saying, "X years later". Pick a number between 1 and 10. There is a 30% chance that your number appears as X at some point in the movie. Also twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is one of them.
3. Caricature of Atheism This one includes a tiny spoiler, but you probably don't care since I've destroyed any intention you had of seeing this movie...
One of the children in the main family becomes an atheist, apparently in his teenage years. His drifting from the Christian faith is shown as in direct correlation with his involvement in partying and doing drugs. No doubt this is reality for some people, but the real problem is this: The "atheism" depicted is really just a search for truth. This is rather explicitly communicated in two scenes in particular.
In the second (which should be looked at first, I think), the atheist son is moving out of the house. His car is packed, and his mother is going through a box of his things, examining each one nostalgically. One of the first things she sees is a book entitled, "The Illusion of God". This isn't a real book, according to my search of the internet, and is probably to be interpreted as an allusion to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Horrified, the mother shows him the book, as if to demand an explanation. He pauses before talking, as if she'd just found a baggie of coke in his glove compartment. Then she finds a baggie of coke in his glove compartment. Can it get more explicit than that? It's worth noting that the acting in this scene is awful, so that virtually all of its intended emotional effect is absent.
The first scene is basically the same script as the second but the son is 3 years younger (remember the time jumps?). His mother opens his bedroom door to see him reading a book. We don't see the title (edit: it is "The Stranger" by Albert Camus), but in light of the first scene, it's safe to assume this was the spark that sent him down the path to atheism. "Something for a class?" she asks. "No, just for fun," he replies. Literally the next words out of his mouth are a request for permission to go to a concert on the weekend. The band, he says, is "kind of" Christian.
It's clear the writers want to communicate that any reading of the arguments of the "other side" is a sure sign of apostasy. It's as if they thought the arguments were unanswerable. But surely this is not the case if, as they claim, Christianity is true? One wonders if they really believe it is...
1. Awkward Scene Transitions Like I said in the intro, it really does feel like each scene is its own skit, with very little relation to those surrounding it. As such, most of the movie's ideas go completely undeveloped in its ninety minutes.
2. Random Jumps in Time It really is just that; every 20 minutes or so, there appear three words on the screen saying, "X years later". Pick a number between 1 and 10. There is a 30% chance that your number appears as X at some point in the movie. Also twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is one of them.
3. Caricature of Atheism This one includes a tiny spoiler, but you probably don't care since I've destroyed any intention you had of seeing this movie...
One of the children in the main family becomes an atheist, apparently in his teenage years. His drifting from the Christian faith is shown as in direct correlation with his involvement in partying and doing drugs. No doubt this is reality for some people, but the real problem is this: The "atheism" depicted is really just a search for truth. This is rather explicitly communicated in two scenes in particular.
In the second (which should be looked at first, I think), the atheist son is moving out of the house. His car is packed, and his mother is going through a box of his things, examining each one nostalgically. One of the first things she sees is a book entitled, "The Illusion of God". This isn't a real book, according to my search of the internet, and is probably to be interpreted as an allusion to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Horrified, the mother shows him the book, as if to demand an explanation. He pauses before talking, as if she'd just found a baggie of coke in his glove compartment. Then she finds a baggie of coke in his glove compartment. Can it get more explicit than that? It's worth noting that the acting in this scene is awful, so that virtually all of its intended emotional effect is absent.
The first scene is basically the same script as the second but the son is 3 years younger (remember the time jumps?). His mother opens his bedroom door to see him reading a book. We don't see the title (edit: it is "The Stranger" by Albert Camus), but in light of the first scene, it's safe to assume this was the spark that sent him down the path to atheism. "Something for a class?" she asks. "No, just for fun," he replies. Literally the next words out of his mouth are a request for permission to go to a concert on the weekend. The band, he says, is "kind of" Christian.
It's clear the writers want to communicate that any reading of the arguments of the "other side" is a sure sign of apostasy. It's as if they thought the arguments were unanswerable. But surely this is not the case if, as they claim, Christianity is true? One wonders if they really believe it is...