Review of God's Not Dead 2 (2016) by N R — 31 May 2016

First off this is a continuation of the first movie and not a completely separate one as the title may suggest.

I love seeing my home town of Little Rock, Arkansas portrayed in a good way (no hillbillies, rednecks, wood critters, gangs- thanks HBO! -, etc.) so naturally I wanted to see this especially because I kind of liked the first one.

This one starts out fine and with Hart bringing a fine performance. However when the word "Bible" is mentioned in her class, all Hell breaks loose.

It's fine so far and takes a PC issue and goes about as extreme against it as possible. That's expected. What's NOT expected is when the movie takes a turn and goes on a "we are going to prove God is dead" path. Swing and a miss. The issue at hand was "did she single out a religion and teach it?" So instead of getting to the bottom of that issue, they want to prove God is real. Ooh kaaay... Movie did you forget your plot?

To its credit it does a good job taking on those questions, bringing in actual authors (shameless plug ins for their books) and other experts.

The movie feels like it's going to be a cliché of the oppressed little kid taking the stand in court and making it a slam dunk for the defense. But to its credit the character absolutely gets destroyed by the prosecutor. It was rather refreshing to see that.

***SPOILER ALERT***.

But just as all looks lost for our hero, a deaus ex machina from above happens and everything turns out ok. (come on, did you really think it would turn out differently?).

All of our main characters from the first movie are back and they expand on their stories. I particularly liked the Chinese kid's B-story as it is perhaps the most thought pervoking and relevant to today's issues. It is a continuation of his story from the last movie.

As a Christian myself I felt like it was trying to play the Christian persecution card we see today too hard.

While I can't say you'll enjoy this if you enjoyed the last movie, you probably have an idea if you want to see this movie just by the title alone.

Oh and if you do see it there is a scene at the end of the credits that completes a part of the story everyone thinks is left hanging (because nobody wants to stay any longer). It also sets up a God's not dead 3.