Oh boy, here we go …
For the most part, you can just take Kevin McCreary’s review and insert it here. I would, however, like to address a few things myself, and I’ll start with the positives. First of all, there are actually some really nice shots in this film that are theatrical enough to be right up my alley. Second, the film takes its time before it starts shoving the Bible in our faces, allowing the story’s development to take center stage for a while. Third, it’s tough for a religious movie to say “this is the world you’re living in” without it feeling both preachy and unrealistic, so I think it may work in this movie’s (or perhaps this genre’s) favor to do something more in the vein of sci-fi/fantasy.
That being said, the movie is still pretty silly, rather preachy, a little unbelievable, and a bit too cliche. I always like the rule that events can be unrealistic, but the reactions of the human characters to these events must be realistic if we are to take the story at all seriously, and I don’t think this movie makes the human characters quite believable enough for the story to work. The movie begs to be riffed, as I did throughout. It doesn’t do the best job at holding my attention, so I actually paused the movie one day and abandoned it for a few weeks. My long break from the film was also due to the fact that I found it kind of depressing – several cars and planes crashing, people losing loved ones, and especially dogs lost without their owners are all ideas I’d rather not associate with a benevolent supreme being.
So, in the end, it’s not the worst movie I’ve seen, but it’s far from the best. Oh, and please, no more bookend voice-overs in religious movies ever again.
