Review of The Gospel (2005) by Bethany B — 06 Feb 2008

Who was this movie made for? I think both church-goers and non-church-goers will be confused. The plot and dialogue were disjointed. The characters were steorotypes and followed sudden, strange whims in order to advance the "story.

" I had trouble understanding why I was supposed to like the church in peril. Now, I dislike "preachy" movies, but this movie didn't just preach, it preached all the wrong things. The storyline, the characters, even the cinemaphotography all seemed to focus more on church, especially the "show" aspect of church, than on Christianity, God, morality, the gospel.

.. some of the things I was expecting from a movie called The Gospel. I could never find a character who seemed honest enough to be the moral center. (Perhaps because of a combination of unintentionally hypocritical-sounding dialogue and the director/actors/producer's skewed view of what sincerity looks like?) There was no real turning point; instead, it was if, reaching the end of the script, the writer(s) went, "Oh, we've only got a few pages left--this character needs to get saved now, and this character needs to stop being a hypocrite.

" But the supposed turning points were almost invisible in the fluster of "life-changing" moments throughout the film. The music, however, was good (though hard sometimes to view as "worship" music), and the cinemaphotographer was obviously talented but as confused about the point of the movie as I was: the whole piece was shot like a music video.

If it had been a much shorter music video, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more.