God's Not Dead

Dir. Harold Cronk. Starring: Shane Harper, Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain

Who in their right mind would willingly pay and sit through something like God's Not Dead; a simple-minded, ham-fisted drama about a god-fearing college freshman who takes on his atheist professor in a debate concerning the existence of god? Well, someone looking for laughs, which the film provides though unintentionally. As I always say, there's no comedy like a bad drama.

God's Not Dead isn't a movie so much as an overly long infomercial about how Jesus and God are the answer and how the atheist-leaning or religiously indifferent masses need to wake up and embrace the divine--or some such nonsense. In fact, the film's production value is something akin to your average TV ad for Cialis.

Like the forthcoming film Heaven is for Real, God's Not Dead suffers from an imaginative-title deficiency but that is only one of its myriad problems. The movie doesn't have time to waste on nuance; it's on a proselytizing jag and its targets are atheism, science and reason. The film's message can be summed up simply as:

Atheists bad.

Christians good.

A newly arrived freshman on a college campus named Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper) looks to enroll in a philosophy course taught by a professor with a reputation for his aggressive, opinion-squelching, defense of atheism, (played by former TV Hercules, Kevin Sorbo). Josh has already made clear his love for God (if the cross dangling from his neck already hasn't) and is undaunted by the professor's reputation.

Josh finds his first day in class to be disconcerting, for his professor plainly states that anyone who doesn't share his incontrovertible view of atheism will fail the class. Though the class seems to be a general philosophy course, somehow the professor's virulent atheism seems to be the only topic of discussion. The Professor's manner is so bullying and intimidating it's astonishing he isn't arrested for assault and battery. One wonders at this point if the filmmakers have actually taken a college philosophy course because no real professor would be so ferociously opinionated. The professor actually insists each student write "God is Dead" on a sheet of paper to ensure he or she receives a passing grade in the course (I'm not making this up)!

Of course our hero, ever-bland and humorless and played that way by Harper, resists; standing firmly on his principles (who can blame him; even I would resist a professor so single-minded; and I'm an atheist!). What follows could only be called a waste of valuable class time and an implausible plot-development as the Professor, played with haughty disdain by Sorbo, challenges the freshman to a God vs Atheism debate.

Josh's girlfriend and friends discourage him from challenging the professor, warning him a bad grade in the course will keep him from law school. The imminent debate is the centerpiece of the film though other characters and subplots contribute to the hooey.

One character is a lefty blogger named Amy Ryan, whose callous, unfeeling boyfriend Mark (Dean Cain) is the movie's greedy, white-collar jerk who can't even be bothered to visit his dementia-afflicted mother. The girlfriend's villain credentials are established early: A shot of her car bumper stickers reveal several liberal causes. Both characters serve as more examples of how angry and hateful the Godless are and how they are in dire need of Jesus' love.

Other characters include a young, Muslim woman who resists her father's demand that she wear a head-scarf in public, which she promptly removes on campus and a Chinese student who shares Josh's class and eventually his love for Jesus. For a brief moment, I thought the movie might at least recognize Mohammed and Buddha as other Gods but no; the Muslim woman's secret and dangerous devotion to Christianity is revealed later, earning her a forceful dismissal from home by her father, who couldn't be more Mullah-like in his intolerance. Got it; only Jesus will do.

Eventually, all the atheists or liberals in the film suffer some sort of comeuppance or as one would easily guess, a conversion. After all her sinister, liberal machinations, Amy is diagnosed with cancer, which she chooses to reveal to Mark at an elegant restaurant. Mark wins the Unbelievable Bastard Award for breaking up with Amy following her cancer disclosure. This didn't make me gasp so much as chuckle: not only do you receive a possible death-sentence from your doctor but your boyfriend uses cancer as legitimate pretext to dump your ass. Yes, Amy, that's what you get for being Godless.

The debate proceeds as one would expect with the usual arguments for and against God's existence but of course in the end, you know who prevails. And it isn't enough that Josh wins the debate and convinces the class of his righteous position, he must also elicit a confession from the professor about how he came to hate God. And that isn't enough, for the professor, on his way to find his God-fearing girlfriend who he had earlier offended with his intolerant ways, is struck by a car. While lying in the street, he accepts God into his life as a Reverend waits beside him. And how does the Reverend comfort the dying professor? One might expect him to say "Stay calm until help arrives" or "Don't worry, help is on the way," but no, the Reverend actually says (again, I'm not making this up) "You'll actually get to see God before we do."(!) Thanks Reverend, good to know my chance of surviving is roughly that of a snow cone in hell. Isn't God great?

The movie ends with Amy embracing Jesus' love, the professor's convenient disposal, the Chinese and Muslim student's conversions to faith and everyone converging at a Christian rock concert by the band Newsboys for spiritual uplift and God's love, which radiate white-hot from the arena.

With the closing credits is a list of dozens of legal cases where religious groups filed successful lawsuits against universities all across the country to allow the Word to be spread. Following the list we see an exhortation to spread more of said Word.

The list of legal cases seemed like a desperate attempt to convince audiences the demand for God's word is still strong in institutions of higher learning. In all actuality, it confirms the opposite: there is a growing resistance to having Christianity as a presence on college campuses.

Is God dead? If he's not, God's Not Dead is happy to inform us he's definitely in a coma and is trying to be resuscitated.