Review of Letters to God (2010) by Sums I — 18 Aug 2010

I really wanted to like this movie, but struggled with the acting, the unanswered questions and the far-too-many music montages created to fill time.

Although I believe "Letters to God" has its heart in the right place, the emotions seemed forced and the story too surface level. Even as a devout Christian, I ended up being rather unsatisfied with the conclusions drawn in the movie and wished for a lot more realism.

One of the few scenes where true emotions were expressed was when the mom got mad at the situation and verbally lashed out at the grandma, expressing her desires for everybody to "quit quoting scripture." Well, like much of the movie, these honest expressions of grief and frustration were merely brushed off... remaining unanswered and unresolved.

In another bothersome scene the young boy asks his mom if somebody has to die for another person to be born. Of course his intentions are sweet... he is willing to be replaced by a new baby coming soon, but the Mom can't even answer that simple of a question. She simply says, "Only God can answer that..." when it's obvious that the population increases, so the answer is an easy "No, son. Here's why...".

So for me the whole movie was a missed opportunity in exploring some of the more challenging aspects of living in a sinful world, where bad things happen to good people. Instead of using the powerful example of this young boy's faith in spite of his cancer & what that says about God's peace, everything is brushed over by good feelings and easy acceptance without explanation or reason.

When real Christianity actually has answers to life's hard questions it frustrates me that those answers weren't even explored.

I suppose this might be a decent film to show kids 9-13, as it will expose them to a faith in God through tough times. It's also free of poor language. However it might also be upsetting, so as an adult you'd better be prepared to give your kids much better answers to life's questions than this movie offers!