Review of God's Not Dead (2014) by Mepitts — 02 Apr 2014

Well Rats. First, I need to say as a university faculty member and a Christian, I deeply believe in the overall MESSAGE of this movie: The God of Abraham and Paul and Mother Teresa and Pope Francis and MY God, and his son Jesus Christ are alive and instructing and blessing me daily. People do need to know about the resource and comfort and "rock" that God provides. For that the movie gets an "A." And I'd also say that although there are strident Christians who misuse the public square for hateful messages, there IS an attempt in the secular community, and certainly in the academy, to marginalize Christians. Faculty members do use their power in the classroom to try to silence opinions with which they disagree in a violation of BOTH sections of the first amendment.

That said, the movie itself was not very realistic. A professor giving a student twenty minutes in each of three classes to make the case for God and putting it to a class vote? Come on. I can see how a Christian kid who'd been abused in a secular professor's classroom would fantasize bout such a thing, but it ain't gonna happen.

The Pure Flix movies tend to follow this pattern--sincere but not especially well done. I like Sherwood Pictures (Fireproof, Courageous) better and will continue to support Christian movies as they evolve and get better. The Christian movie genre is still in its infancy and deserves an chance to improve.

So "A" for effort and overall message, but, with regret, "D" for everything else.