Review of Heaven Is for Real (2014) by Jarrett M — 30 May 2014

Roommate dragged me into the movie. It was meandering and unfocused, it blithely ignored all the things that could have been meaningful, and it was sprinkled with "profound" pretty moments that were clearly meant to emotionally manipulate people who are much less cynical than your typical fedora atheist.

Verdict: No, it's not some nasty evangelical propaganda thing, but it is completely devoid of intellectual or literary meaning, which is just a huge, saddening, wasted opportunity. But what did you expect from a movie that draws people in with a little boy talking about riding unicorns with Jesus?

There were good ideas--the guy has a little crisis because he's a sincere believer in heaven and it doesn't feel right to be handed an easy answer like this, and he REALLY doesn't feel right preaching about heaven. There's also the question of whether hearing about the dead grandpa and the stillborn kid is quite healthy; it's re-opening old wounds that they had rightfully moved on from.

None of these good ideas are resolved by the ending.

They make a big point of how he will not allow himself to dodge the question of whether his son really and truly did see the real heaven. And then he completely dodges the question and we're supposed to see it as beautiful and profound. Of course everyone knows that ending is going to be "blah blah blah God is love and belief in heaven makes us happy anyway" but the way he says it actually throws out the issues and potential lessons from the rest of the story.

So basically fuck this movie.

It's a petty thing, but there's just one little scene that really pissed me off: an atheist character shows up and is blatantly, heavy-handedly supposed to show that atheists and educated people are closed-minded. I tolerated most of the movie, but that really got me angry. Not because it slams atheists, mind you--because it delivers the message that "you shouldn't believe in a naturalistic world that has no room for bullshit.".

The worst thing is that the scene really didn't have to end that way. The preacher character could have just walked out saying "Well, I guess you've given me something to think about" i.e. the atheist explanation of what happened is another thing for him to wrestle with and come to terms with. In fact, that little thread would have been nicely wrapped up by the ending, because the ending is all about him coming to terms with the fact that he can't really know whether what his kid saw was real or not.

But no. He openly says "I reject this perspective" with something oh-so-profound about how maybe, just maybe, the atheist woman should look outside of her little world of logic.

... Well. At least the REST of the movie isn't preachy. Just inconclusive and dissatisfying.