"God's Not Dead 2" Movie Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 0.5/5 Stars

Let's get one thing straight: Christian movies haven't been good for a long time.  There always seems to be so many problems with them: laughable acting, a ham fisted message, uninteresting stories, embarrassing production quality, and so many other things. There have only been a few explicitly Christian movies I have ever enjoyed: "Courageous" at least had a decent message, and "Facing the Giants"  is pretty harmless as well, not trying to be too overbearing in its themes and presenting a straight-forward story. The same can't be said for any movie coming from Pure Flix. I have tried to avoid this movie (or more accurately, "propaganda") group like the plague because I have always seen very harsh reviews for their movies from both Christians and non-Christians alike. But none of their movies became too public until "God's Not Dead", which grossed a whopping $64 million, the biggest money-making Christian film since "The Passion of the Christ". When I saw this movie, I was so surprised that THIS was the Christian movie making so much money. It was even worse than other movies like it, emphasizing the tropes of bad Christian movies in even larger ways. It had a very us vs. them approach, with pretty much every Christian being this good, pure person, and the atheists being bitter, evil people who were illogical in choosing to not believe in God. It is an insulting movie to both Christians and atheists. "God's Not Dead 2" is somehow even worse than the first one in more ways than one. This one is pretty much a court drama where a teacher named Grace (how subtle) is put on trial for merely talking about Jesus in historical context in the classroom.

This movie goes beyond the problems of bad acting and production quality, but let's address those surface level things first. The acting is straight-up deplorable in this movie. And the worst thing is, it isn't that the performances are too over-the-top, it's that pretty much every single one is under performed and bland. This honestly makes it worse, whereas the first "God's Not Dead" at least benefited from some the leads actually trying. It's hard to get behind Melissa Joan Hart as main character Grace, as she does not put anything into her role. All her lines are delivered very stilted and awkward. Nothing about this character is convincing. But maybe the worst part of all of this is, though she is the main character, she doesn't get many lines as the focus is more on court drama. So, her character is not developed in any sense of the word. Grace is extremely one-note, and doesn't change at any moment in the movie, which makes for a bad protagonist as well as bad writing. The same can be said for almost every other role. Jesse Metacalfe as Tom Endler, the lawyer defending Grace, is another lead and doesn't have anything compelling to offer, either. He starts out the movie as an atheist (probably more accurately an agnostic, but this movie doesn't explore the subtleties of beliefs), but his "implied" change to a Christian is so quick and doesn't make sense. It comes out of nowhere. His character is just a generic nice guy, nothing more, nothing less. But the worst contender for acting is Ray Wise as Peter Kane, the one going up against Grace and trying to get her fired. It's not entirely his fault, because I know this guy is normally a good actor. But the movie creators painted him as a very cartoonish villain instead of a fleshed out human being. All the guy does throughout the movie is make evil smiles and say ridiculous things like "I'm going to prove once and for all God is dead", which is not something any atheist would say. His character isn't redeemed either (more on that later). He's basically a straw man, someone you're so obviously forced to hate in order to favor Grace. It's a weak and pathetic tactic on the movie creators' parts. The only good performance comes from Pat Boone, whose charming persona shone through his character, but he was in it for a disappointingly short amount of time.

What might make this movie even more awful is just how boring it is in terms of production value. The camera angles are so basic and cliched. I nearly fell asleep because nothing interesting was happening with them. There were sometimes when there were these bizarre long shots that didn't feel like they were needed, and it left the actors just awkwardly sitting there most of the time. The lighting was all bright and cheerful, even in the more "serious" moments of the film, so there was no feeling of tension or variation in tone. But all these production things can't compare to what really hurt this film: the pacing. Wow, was it boring. The movie started slow and didn't ever pick up pace or become interesting; the only part that really did catch my attention was the ending, and that's just because of how dumb and over-the-top it was. Otherwise, everything just felt like it was moving along at a snails pace; I felt every minute of this 1 hour and 49 minute showtime. The court scenes just dragged on and on, with some of the witnesses feeling like they were testifying on the podium for 5 minutes or so. All of the testimonies were supposed to have a certain amount of weight to them. But they were so underwhelming in how they were presented that I didn't feel any weight or tension in them at all. And the ending of this movie just threw so much on you that it was impossible to take it all in. Perhaps the weirdest part of this was the movie ending on a Newsboys concert. I know that the Newsboys have their fingerprints all over this movie, but ending it was them felt out of place with what the rest of the movie was doing. In fact, their presence in this movie felt very unnecessary, just like in the first one. I guess people think that this movie is automatically good because it has the Newsboys seal of approval on it, but that just feels like a horrible excuse designed by the creators of this franchise. And unfortunately, people literally brought into this premise. I'm convinced it is because of the Newsboys this movie got off the ground, and because of that, I have lost a lot of respect for them and can't bring myself to listen to any of their music from the Michael Tait era.

Now let's move on to what I really need to address. Just consider this: as of right now, this franchise is the most popular Christian movie franchise. And what does this franchise do? I can tell you that there isn't a trace of redeemable message here, as it feels more like shameless propaganda than anything, designed to make Christians paranoid. Even worse, this movie does even MORE harm than its predecessor. Much like the first one, one of this movie's problems is painting almost every atheist as one-dimensional evil people with no complexity to them. The only atheists considered good in here aren't necessarily atheists (even though the movie still claims they are) at all, since they are asking questions and considering Christianity (once again, they'd be more of the agnostic practice). But the ones that are true atheists through and through, no joke, are all older men or women wearing business suits. They all have an evil agenda to try to tear down Christianity because they believe it is tearing the fabrics of society down- don't believe me? That's exactly what Peter Kane says he wants to do, and it sounded like something so stupid; no human besides a really paranoid one would say this. I am not joking, Kane says a line exactly like that, and it is supposed to be taken seriously. Since Pure Flix is saying that atheists are like this, they are actually the paranoid ones appealing to a paranoid Christian demographic. These creators are basically saying that atheists want to destroy us and want to claim God is dead, which is a pretty strong and hateful thing to say about other people who God tells us we should love. All of this is just wrong. Atheists don't believe God is dead, they believe God doesn't exist at all. So, the premise of both of these movies is already pretty messed up based on that; there is no understanding of the atheist practice. But there are even more problematic things in this movie.

"God's Not Dead 2" makes their claim about separation of church and state abundantly clear: there shouldn't be any separation at all. Teachers should be able to evangelize to their impressionable students in a secular classroom, instead of letting students discover their faith for them self with guidance from their direct family or religious figures. And yet, the way they go about trying to defend this idea is really weak. In the courtroom, people who are defending Grace often just use fancy speech and simple, appealing ideas to entice the movie-going audience. There is no evidence used, no true analysis of Biblical text. There were two interesting times when two real-life authors of two books came up and testified about God, but their testimonies were extremely wordy and confusing. And there were times when the movie was confused about what it was saying in regards to separation of church and state: sometimes it was saying that this trial wasn't about faith,  but then other times it said it was about faith. So, which one is it? The final verdict seems to be that the trial WAS a case for faith, but even then I wasn't very sure because of how disorganized the trial felt. The way the trial was won was extremely nonsensical. All that the lawyer defending Grace does is uses some strong rhetoric about her faith and how she should have freedom of speech or whatever, and that somehow convinces the jury to declare her innocent. How that happened, I don't know. I laughed (cynically, mind you) when I saw that happened; this movie is so far removed from reality it's ridiculous.

At the end of the day, all this movie is concerned about is preaching to this demographic of Christians that is apparently so paranoid atheists are trying to destroy Christianity and the fabric of society. If this is the movie franchise (or as the movie itself puts it, the "God's Not Dead Movement") that is championing the Christian cause,  then we have a problem. The series doesn't know what it wants to say, having big contradictions in regards to its views on evolution, the separation of church and state, and a spiteful look on atheists when God teaches us to not judge others based on labels or beliefs. There are stereotypes galore, from the dangerous Muslim father and cruel atheist who rejected God based on emotion (the rejection of God is almost always based logical reasons for atheists) in the first "God's Not Dead", to an Asian father who rejects his son because he chose Christianity and evil atheists who all wore business suits in "God's Not Dead 2". This franchise, as well as Pure Flix, is a disease, and both need to be eradicated. If these movies continue to be successful, then it will be no surprise as to why the secular world views many Christians as close-minded and lacking clear thought. Skip out on both of these movies, as not only are they miserable to watch, but they are sure to make you angry. If you are one of the Christians who likes these series, I have no ill will towards you. But I ask you: would God really promote these movies? Just think on it.