Review of God's Not Dead (2014) by Amanda S — 19 Oct 2014

It would be nearly unwatchable if it wasn't so damn funny. From the writers who brought you such made-for-TV gems as Race Against Time and Earth vs The Spider comes God's Not Dead. A faith based film in which a caricature of an atheist professor bullies a young Christian freshmen who he challenges to prove that god is indeed not dead.

How does he do it? Or rather how do the screenwriters pull off this daunting task? They don't. The two characters trade off insults thinly-veiled as them "making their points." They flaunt out Hawkings and then weakly try to disprove him because you know, the guys who wrote Earth Vs The Spider know how to disprove Stephen Hawking, and they go out of their way to make the professor seem like an absolute dick.

That's kind of the M.O of this film, Christians good - everyone else, sad, angry people devoid of Christ's love. It would have been to the film's credit that they included a Muslim family but lo and behold the father just had to be an abuser.

You know because Islam is scary!!!!!! I'm kidding, they make the Muslim father out to look as fearful and intimidating as possible. If the actor doesn't appear in Taken 3, I'll be surprised.

The fact he doesn't straight up honor kill his daughter for (listening to Christian gospel) is about as much restraint as this film shows. Everything else is hammered with the subtley of a child banging pots together.

For all purposes it's a terrible film. It's decently acted if we judge by Lifetime Movie standards and technically it's passable. I mean save for the atrociously shot scene with Duck Dynasty's Willie Robertson and his wife (that's a one and done take if I've ever seen one.

) it's fairly well shot and decently edited. Everything else is a mess.