Critic Reviews

Manages to be appealing, poignant and inspiring in ways that are gentle and quite real. This smartly calibrated film also pulls off something rare by presenting religious commitment as something that's not only potentially healing and elevating, but also kind of cool.

Overlong and entirely too ambitious in the number of “issues” it tries to cover, To Save a Life wanders all over the place before reaching its very predictable conclusions.

Just as representations of human sexuality on film are often unpleasantly twisted by the grotesqueries of the porn industry, so, too, are filmic representations of religious conversion homogenized by the faith-based entertainment industry. Case in point: Debutante director Brian Baugh's To Save a Life.

Miles ahead in terms of production values and a conscious avoidance of overt proselytizing. It will likely be an enormous success with the evangelical communities at which it's targeted. That doesn't save it from being an utter failure outside that narrow context.

Produced with the best of intentions by a California church and directed without distinction by first-timer Brian Baugh, To Save a Life would be bland and boring even as a half-hour after-school special.

To Save a Life wants to rescue kids from the Satanic messages of "Gossip Girl"--a benign, even worthy enough objective, but must alternatives to empty, materialistic adolescence require baptism in the Pacific?

The film would be a mere nuisance if not for its shameless exploitation of school shootings to advance its agenda.

A well-meaning but ineptly made message movie.