God's Not Dead

The film has entertaining moments, but these are clearly secondary to its proselytizing intentions.

The pace is stumbling, the characters are broad, the makeup and the performances uneven, though Sorbo dives into his tactless, unethical indoctrinator role with Satanic glee.

Ban this sick filth.

Even grading on a generous curve, this strident melodrama about the insidious efforts of America’s university system to silence true believers on campus is about as subtle as a stack of Bibles falling on your head.

Even by the rather lax standards of the Christian film industry, God’s Not Dead is a disaster.

Any just God would likely recoil from the ham-fisted and spurious defense put forth in this film.

The folks trashing this movie just don't get it. This is a brilliant showing of how angry Hawking was at the world, where John Lennox can find a brilliant connection between mathematics and the Bible. Faith exists in this film, not religion by itself, and that's a powerful thing.

This is a decent film about standing up for your beliefs. Has some good songs.

God's not dead tries to develope everybody's faith, but it fails on his not-talented interpretations, many plots at the same time and predictable stunts. For cinematographic aspects, this is a piece of rubbish. Sadly, for the audience, this could be a boring film, bececuase of the stupid and I groans viewers who says God's dead (and of course, who never will say it).

The song from the Newsboys is admittedly catchy as hell, but the rest of the movie is dumb and only believable to the kind of people who think christians in America are actually persecuted.

What I liked about God's Not Dead: - Kevin Sorbo's performance. He's really good at drawing empathy for a bitter intellectual. He brings nihilism to life when quoting Job and Shakespeare. And with his command over his role, he almost makes it believable that his character can away with what he gets away with. - The pacing and build-up to the climax, true to the form of a David and Goliath story. I always felt engaged, and each scene came when it felt like it should come. - Despite the enormous cast for a short movie, all of the characters are distinct and memorable. By "memorable" I don't mean "interesting"; I just mean "when I see their face, I remember who they are and why they're important". What I didn't like: - The unbelievability of it all. Several characters make decisions, and several situations exist, simply because the plot needs it to be that way. Small example: the way the main character's girlfriend of 6 years breaks up with him over his choice to debate the professor. I can't see why she in her right mind would do that. But the movie needs it to be that way to show that Christians are persecuted and alienated for confessing Christ. - There's almost no moral nuance in any character. It's totally black-and-white; all the Christian characters are good and all the non-Christian characters are bad. The non-Christians never make a good point that's taken seriously, and the Christians never say or do anything questionable in the name of their religion. Everyone is defined by the side that they take, not by their individual desires or demons. - There were a few scenes that were supposed to be dramatic or tragic, but in the moment, the characters turned into mouthpieces for doctrine. They made me giggle because of how ridiculously out-of-place their words were. This is when the movie became "so bad it's good". - There are so many subplots that some of them don't have the time they would need to be developed in a way that makes sense. It's less a story and more a bunch of tenuously connected stuff that happens. - It's shallow. If there's any real moral of the story, it's that the love of Jesus brings people together. And it brings them together at a Newsboys concert. Nevermind their trauma and dire circumstances. Just pay to go watch people perform on stage and it will all be better. - And finally: its thesis is unconvincing. The movie basically sidesteps the issue of whether or not God actually exists, and just focuses on the power of the cultural phenomenon of Christianity. And the persecution it supposedly faces. The characters who *are* converted are converted way too easily, and the persecutors are obvious straw men. The movie has little verisimilitude. It's not a story about humans doing human things and going through human changes. It's propaganda.