By being open-minded, I mean foregoing the knee-jerk reaction to pan anything with even subtle Christian themes as brainwashing trash. ;)
The scenes where the boy performs "miracles" seem to be ambiguous at best, and even as a believer I find that even in the context of the movie, there are other explanations. The movie isn't about some magic. It's showing the power of faith comes more in the good that it can lead one to do. Is it a bit like a "Sunday school lecture"? Maybe in the sense that since the main protagonist is a child. And even then, it's a fairly generic message that isn't really promoting Christianity as much as "faith" on a more general scale. A major character in the film has "faith in himself" and believes God to be imaginary and yet he's portrayed as one of the smarter and more noble characters in the film. This isn't "God's Not Dead."
I don't have a prejudice against movie critics. I have experience with knowing that their opinions are often wildly different from, not only my own, but even the general movie-going public. I also know that it's pretty easy to just cherry-pick critics that suit one's agenda or only focus on what the "elite" critics think. I write reviews for a site too, so I suppose I'm also a critic too. And as a critic, I've come to learn that one person's opinion of a movie is one person's opinion. You may agree or disagree with it, but critical reviews are rarely sufficient proof of anything regarding the movie. (And especially when it comes to Christian movies.) And citing Noah doesn't exactly help your case either. lol "Many more." Ah yes, the ambiguous masses. Classic.
Well, I can't read all the critical reviews out there. I've read a few. I'm doing a review myself noting some of the flaws I found. I'm not arguing this is a perfect movie. I'm not even arguing that a negative movie is an attack on my religion, necessarily. That wasn't the question. The question was whether this was a heavy-handed Christian movie or not. And citing critics saying that is (especially if you haven't seen it yourself) doesn't really mean anything. I actually have seen the movie and noted it's flaws. If anything, I find the flaws to be that it's a bit too light-handed with the Christianity. The movie doesn't really mention anything about converting to Christianity. The atheist in the film doesn't have a "come to Jesus" moment. If somebody feels this is heavy handed, I can only conclude that their skin is so thin that the mere presentation of Christian persons mentioning anything remotely tied to Christianity is viewed as beating them over the head with religion. Look, I despise preachy Christian movies. I hate it when the plot stops so characters can mindlessly quote popular scripture to convert the "unsaved" friend. I think Christian movies typically suck. I did not think that about this movie, and by comparison? To call this heavy-handed just comes off as babbling and it ruins anyone's credibility, IMO. If somebody has a problem that it's too schmaltzy, fair enough. Maybe they thought the ending was way too contrived, okay, I can respect that. Maybe they didn't like the kid's constipated facial expressions when he's "faith" moving? Well, I've heard dumber complaints. But to say that this was heavy handed? It's sort of a big "grow up" reaction from me. If we were talking about God's Not Dead, okay. But the only thing heavy handed about this is the cheesy storyline.
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