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Do You Believe?:
Do You Believe is what I like to call a Jesus Movie. Jesus Movie is a derogatory nickname that me, my sister, and my friend and lover of bad movies Mike use to refer to a subgenre of the religious film genre. A Jesus Movie is special for a few reasons. Jesus Movies are the most mainstream form of religious movies coming out these days, and they tend to feel like propaganda. The purpose of its existence is to push its political message, not to make a good film that happens to have a message. Most of all, a Jesus Movie is extremely, excruciatingly, nauseatingly heavy handed film. I am agnostic, I guess, but it's more like indifference in reality. I have no kind of bias toward Christian movies, but I really don't like Jesus Movies. This particular movie is made by PureFlix, creators of God's Not Dead, one of the worst movies in any genre ever made, and possibly the definitive example of everything wrong with Jesus Movies. Do You Believe is completely unrelated to that, but it feels like a spiritual successor in a few ways.
First, the storytelling style of having a bunch of interconnected subplots is back. God's Not Dead did this, and I noted it for at least being an interesting way of telling the story, in a Crash style. Do You Believe takes that Crash style, and connects them at the end, in...a car crash. This is Crash. There's no middle ground here, no debates about how they are just using elements or taking influence. They made Crash. Not only did they remake Crash, but they somehow found a way to make it even more heavy handed than it was. I didn't even know that was possible.
Do You Believe also copies a few other notes from God's Not Dead, such as a Christian refusing to help a man near death, and instead forcing him to accept Jesus into his heart and die (And in both cases that Christian is treated as a hero by the film for this action. The filmmakers want the audience to believe that this action is a positive thing. I can't be the only one to find that deplorable), ending the film with a Newsboys song, and making every single antagonist an atheist that gets converted in the third act. The character thing might be my biggest problem. I cannot get interested in your characters when you are only capable of writing 3 of them. There's the super religious person that converts a troubled and lost soul and/or the atheist villain, the ridiculous and over-the-top atheist villain that actively hates God and has no other characteristic (and lets it get in the way of their work all the time), and the Christian that doubts their faith only to be saved by a traumatic event. So who are our characters in this film?
Jesus Movies are generally known for not getting any big actors, but Sean Astin of Lord of the Rings fame plays the one dimensional atheist doctor who is jealous of God because he wants credit for saving lives. He yells at patients for believing in God the way no doctor ever would, gets angry with his assistant for praying, and of course is converted at the end of the film. Other "villains" include the gangster Kriminal (Still more subtle of a name than Josh Wheeton), who learns to follow God after his gunned down friend Pretty Boy (Why yes, these characters are total stereotypes that only speak in language that a 50 year old white man thinks 20 year old black men use) gives him a cross as he dies (I wasn't sure whether to laugh or impale my television when the doctor asked if the first guy's name was Kriminal and he responded with "It was. Not anymore."), and Andrea, the attorney that sues the Christian EMT worker for not saving a man but then feels bad because God saved her in the car crash.
The first two acts feel like a made for TV movie, if the Hallmark Channel had a religious branch. The cinematography, performances, and sets aren't necessarily bad, but they are definitely not good. It's quite boring, as the entire thing hovers around 'okay', never going above and rarely going below. I will credit Alexa PenaVega (She added a surname, but it's the girl from Spy Kids) as giving the best performance as a suicidal teenage girl. It's not great, and it's barely good, but it was something interesting to watch, as opposed to every other subplot in the film, where an older Christian person feels oppressed or deals with first world problems. Granted, the ante is upped quite a bit by putting actual stakes in, like a diseased man near death or a family that can't have children. (God's Not Dead had the exact same structure to fill out its run time, and satisfied these first world problem subplot slots with things like car troubles and having an interview subject refuse to answer questions. A mild step up all around.)
The third act is the part where I have something to talk about. The crash happens, and cars go hurtling out of control. A couple of people die (because in Jesus Movies death is a happy ending because they go to heaven or something), a couple of people get saved, and all of the atheists get redeemed by helping little girls escape through back windows or helping to give live birth. (Yes, I would think that the baby would be dead after a vicious car accident, but it came out looking better than the one in American Sniper.) And while there were plenty of stupid moments where I didn't know whether to laugh or feel insulted, the very ending got me to lean to the latter for sure. An old man named Joe dies. Sean Astin writes the death certificate. 8 minutes pass. Joe comes back to life. Sean Astin looks at his charts, bewildered by the miracle of a man who was dead for 4 times longer than a person can be dead for and still come back to life coming back to life. Joe looks up at him, and uses the ultimate Christian comeback: "The answer is in the Bible." It is the most irrational and lazy ending possible for something like this. It's completely unrealistic, even within the context of the universe of the film (At no point before this does something unexplainable happen without any kind of practical help from a living person). Sean Astin, of course, buys this completely and decides that he should go and pray to a Newsboys song.
While not offensive like its PureFlix predecessor, Do You Believe is certainly a step below theatrical quality in terms of production values and has no original bone in its body. What I used as a sort of joke in the beginning of this review really fits in the literal sense. Somehow, some way, somebody watched Crash and said "I can make that preachier". At least Crash preached about good things. Don't be racist, love everybody, don't judge the lifestyles of others. This film counters with racist black characters that only make money through thievery (in a gang of about 7 people with no white characters) and speak exclusively in street, Christians trying to passive-aggressively fight those with different beliefs, and characters whose lifestyle of attending church every Sunday is their only trait. This is a film that gives me absolutely no reason to even think about it again.
Do You Believe?:
Do You Believe is what I like to call a Jesus Movie. Jesus Movie is a derogatory nickname that me, my sister, and my friend and lover of bad movies Mike use to refer to a subgenre of the religious film genre. A Jesus Movie is special for a few reasons. Jesus Movies are the most mainstream form of religious movies coming out these days, and they tend to feel like propaganda. The purpose of its existence is to push its political message, not to make a good film that happens to have a message. Most of all, a Jesus Movie is extremely, excruciatingly, nauseatingly heavy handed film. I am agnostic, I guess, but it's more like indifference in reality. I have no kind of bias toward Christian movies, but I really don't like Jesus Movies. This particular movie is made by PureFlix, creators of God's Not Dead, one of the worst movies in any genre ever made, and possibly the definitive example of everything wrong with Jesus Movies. Do You Believe is completely unrelated to that, but it feels like a spiritual successor in a few ways.
First, the storytelling style of having a bunch of interconnected subplots is back. God's Not Dead did this, and I noted it for at least being an interesting way of telling the story, in a Crash style. Do You Believe takes that Crash style, and connects them at the end, in...a car crash. This is Crash. There's no middle ground here, no debates about how they are just using elements or taking influence. They made Crash. Not only did they remake Crash, but they somehow found a way to make it even more heavy handed than it was. I didn't even know that was possible.
Do You Believe also copies a few other notes from God's Not Dead, such as a Christian refusing to help a man near death, and instead forcing him to accept Jesus into his heart and die (And in both cases that Christian is treated as a hero by the film for this action. The filmmakers want the audience to believe that this action is a positive thing. I can't be the only one to find that deplorable), ending the film with a Newsboys song, and making every single antagonist an atheist that gets converted in the third act. The character thing might be my biggest problem. I cannot get interested in your characters when you are only capable of writing 3 of them. There's the super religious person that converts a troubled and lost soul and/or the atheist villain, the ridiculous and over-the-top atheist villain that actively hates God and has no other characteristic (and lets it get in the way of their work all the time), and the Christian that doubts their faith only to be saved by a traumatic event. So who are our characters in this film?
Jesus Movies are generally known for not getting any big actors, but Sean Astin of Lord of the Rings fame plays the one dimensional atheist doctor who is jealous of God because he wants credit for saving lives. He yells at patients for believing in God the way no doctor ever would, gets angry with his assistant for praying, and of course is converted at the end of the film. Other "villains" include the gangster Kriminal (Still more subtle of a name than Josh Wheeton), who learns to follow God after his gunned down friend Pretty Boy (Why yes, these characters are total stereotypes that only speak in language that a 50 year old white man thinks 20 year old black men use) gives him a cross as he dies (I wasn't sure whether to laugh or impale my television when the doctor asked if the first guy's name was Kriminal and he responded with "It was. Not anymore."), and Andrea, the attorney that sues the Christian EMT worker for not saving a man but then feels bad because God saved her in the car crash.
The first two acts feel like a made for TV movie, if the Hallmark Channel had a religious branch. The cinematography, performances, and sets aren't necessarily bad, but they are definitely not good. It's quite boring, as the entire thing hovers around 'okay', never going above and rarely going below. I will credit Alexa PenaVega (She added a surname, but it's the girl from Spy Kids) as giving the best performance as a suicidal teenage girl. It's not great, and it's barely good, but it was something interesting to watch, as opposed to every other subplot in the film, where an older Christian person feels oppressed or deals with first world problems. Granted, the ante is upped quite a bit by putting actual stakes in, like a diseased man near death or a family that can't have children. (God's Not Dead had the exact same structure to fill out its run time, and satisfied these first world problem subplot slots with things like car troubles and having an interview subject refuse to answer questions. A mild step up all around.)
The third act is the part where I have something to talk about. The crash happens, and cars go hurtling out of control. A couple of people die (because in Jesus Movies death is a happy ending because they go to heaven or something), a couple of people get saved, and all of the atheists get redeemed by helping little girls escape through back windows or helping to give live birth. (Yes, I would think that the baby would be dead after a vicious car accident, but it came out looking better than the one in American Sniper.) And while there were plenty of stupid moments where I didn't know whether to laugh or feel insulted, the very ending got me to lean to the latter for sure. An old man named Joe dies. Sean Astin writes the death certificate. 8 minutes pass. Joe comes back to life. Sean Astin looks at his charts, bewildered by the miracle of a man who was dead for 4 times longer than a person can be dead for and still come back to life coming back to life. Joe looks up at him, and uses the ultimate Christian comeback: "The answer is in the Bible." It is the most irrational and lazy ending possible for something like this. It's completely unrealistic, even within the context of the universe of the film (At no point before this does something unexplainable happen without any kind of practical help from a living person). Sean Astin, of course, buys this completely and decides that he should go and pray to a Newsboys song.
While not offensive like its PureFlix predecessor, Do You Believe is certainly a step below theatrical quality in terms of production values and has no original bone in its body. What I used as a sort of joke in the beginning of this review really fits in the literal sense. Somehow, some way, somebody watched Crash and said "I can make that preachier". At least Crash preached about good things. Don't be racist, love everybody, don't judge the lifestyles of others. This film counters with racist black characters that only make money through thievery (in a gang of about 7 people with no white characters) and speak exclusively in street, Christians trying to passive-aggressively fight those with different beliefs, and characters whose lifestyle of attending church every Sunday is their only trait. This is a film that gives me absolutely no reason to even think about it again.