A friend of mine invited me to a screening of Play the Flute. I was a bit surprised in that, for some reason, I thought I was going to see Unplanned, so I’m certain that my confusion in that the main characters and plot points of that movie weren’t present, which meant that I kept waiting for that part of the movie to start, which obviously didn’t happen. I think that movie could have solved that problem with a title card at the beginning, which it did not have.
So, spoilers ahead. Also, go ahead and read my Fireproof review if you haven’t already. Also, I’m really annoyed because I had plenty of this written out, and then the WordPress app on my phone decided to have a fit and not actually save what I’d written.
I’ll start by giving credit where it’s due – the tech people involved in producing this film were on point. Camera angles were fantastic, lighting was on point, hair and makeup were done well, sound mixing was flawless, and location shoots were done with consistency and efficacy. The actors and actresses shouldn’t hold their breath for an Oscar, but while the script they had to deal with had massive issues, the cast was pretty well chosen and effective in their delivery. Props to all the people who put in so much hard work into this film.
The movie opens with Matthew 11:16-17, in the King James version of the Bible. That set the tone for a few themes, just none of the ones it was going for. I’m hoping you can agree with me that the language used in the King James version of the Bible isn’t exactly what I’d call ‘readily accessible’ to a modern viewer. I’m not trying to start a “which-version-is-best” debate, but the language used simply isn’t the sort of vernacular which is self-evident to a contemporary audience. The King James version of the Bible is used in exclusivity throughout the movie. I don’t intrinsically mind that, but in doing so, the audience for the film is likely to be an audience of Christians, primarily. Even that, I don’t have a problem with, except that they do the whole direct gospel message in the film, which assumes an unsaved audience. Targeting to a demographic is one thing, but these two things together seem to show a conflict of intent…one which was likely lost on the writers.
80% of Play the Flute takes place in a church setting. A new(ish) pastor comes in to be a youth director at an existing church with an existing youth group, and is shocked – SHOCKED – that a group of 14-18-year-olds aren’t inherently, independently motivated to read the Bible and live their lives according to the principles of the Word of God. He’s shocked – SHOCKED – that those individuals are more concerned with social acceptance and sports, making it difficult for me to believe that he’s ever met an adolescent in a church setting. Now, I’m not an unforgiving person so I do understand that the kids are direct and open about it for the sake of storytelling, but if they were going for realism those kids would have been able to tell the story of Joseph basically-verbatim, and would have been able to give a moving testimony about how much they love God while still ‘doing the bad things’ the other six days of the week. Oh, also, at no point in this movie are any of the kids romantically attracted to anyone else? None of those entanglements are involved? The story would have been much better with one of those, and I’ll get to that in a bit, but the fact that the whole movies goes by with a group of hormonal teenagers never once expressing a desire to even ask another one out on a date is patently unrealistic. While I’m at it, husband-and-wife duo don’t even kiss each other hello or goodbye, let alone express any sexual desire for each other. They are married, movie! If you’re going to take screen time to warn against sex outside of marriage, at least imply there’s sex in marriage!
The youth pastor, along with his senior pastor, throws shade at the churches that talk about numbers and events and programs. I agree with the fact that a church that uses fun events as a replacement to Bible study has issues, for the very reasons they specify. However, that’s like saying that since knives can be used to harm that they shouldn’t be used at all, and the movie itself contradicts this. The youth group goes on their one-day retreat (an event), they have fun, and that event creates an opportunity for the pastor and his wife to impart Godly wisdom into the students with whom they are entrusted. Our protagonist pastor has less success building relationships with the young people and imparting Godly principles to them in a classroom setting than he has at an event or program? I’m shocked – SHOCKED! That’s just not how effective youth ministry works. Yes, a classroom setting is common and it absolutely has its place, but as a rule relationships in youth ministry simply aren’t built that way.
One other thing they did was to go to a cemetery, and the pastor talks about how life is short and fleeting, and gives the whole “where will you be for eternity” thing…y’know, because the perfect way to encourage kids who don’t meaningfully know God to follow Him is to say that the options are to spend eternity with Him…or not. This is a theological rabbit hole of its own, but I’ll say this: the behavioral shifts in the characters are a result of that relationship developing in the natural. How does that work? The pitch is basically a “fire insurance Christianity” sort of thing, but the results are temporal in nature? One of the kids call him out on it, and I was thinking to myself, “that kid would be excellent at CinemaSins”. Even if I didn’t go down that theological rabbit hole, what was his plan? Drive for 20 minutes each way with all the kids in the van, during the day (so, Sunday?) to spend five minutes in a cemetery hearing a story about a turbulent flight and then turn around and go home? That’s a poorly planned Sunday School field trip.
Not a single character has a home life that’s at all expounded upon; every parent seems to just assume the church will handle the spiritual upbringing of their children. We either don’t see parents, or we see very one-note parents who make me wonder about the back stories we spend so much time not-seeing. Natalie’s aunt has four scenes – twice where she laments her getting made fun of (but never encourages her to go to another youth group?), once where she gives the “Moses had a stutter too” speech, and once where she’s around for the apology. Shannon’s mom lets her run the show and the absentee dad is also only discussed in throwaway dialog; basically she’s there to show Shannon’s wealthy background. Marcie’s mom is there thrice – once to say she’s not a fan of Shannon (never explaining why or trying to encourage her daughter to be discerning, just ‘because I said so’), once to exposit the flag metaphor (and assume her daughter was going to make that sort of a choice because her mom guilted her into doing it), and once to show that she’s happy with Marcie’s change. I’m not saying this movie needed more runtime, but I am saying that there’s plenty of lost opportunity here and it’s in conflict with the pastor’s taking responsibility for the choices the students make.
As the pastor continues trying to use Bible-as-a-textbook methods to reach the kids (all of whom have perfect weekly attendance?), eventually, each of them have a shift in their heart to stop doing the bad thing they did before, and apologize for it. Now, to be fair, I do at least give credit to the fact that these changes are primarily done at an individual basis and are the result of an overarching shift for the duration of the movie, and it’s not necessarily any of them reciting a particular prayer publicly, so I was at least pleasantly surprised about that (though the white flag thing was a bit heavy handed). Even so, the “Play the Flute” title refers back to the verse in Matthew, which essentially stated that “you’re either playing the flute, or the flute is playing for you”. The variant I grew up with was, “you’re either a missionary or a mission field”. That’s fine, but it still leaves a whole lot of questions as to why the kids had their change of heart. The verse, restructured for the context of the movie, amounts to guilting the kids into doing the right thing. One by one, each of them stops doing a thing, and we the audience are supposed to be proud of them. I mean, to take that to its logical conclusion, do we then look at the external actions and say “the end justifies the means”? Yes, film limits the ability to show a change of heart rather than a change of action, but literally no adult has a one-on-one conversation with any kid about where their heart really is, leaving plenty of room for the ending to be a group of moral atheists. Really, each of the characters were problematic in one way or another.
Natalie’s parents died tragically…but it’s addressed one time a throwaway line of dialog. Talk about a missed opportunity – how is that not the perfect setup for a crisis of faith? Let Natalie scream at the pastor, “G-gg-God couldn’t ss-sss-stop my parents from-mm-m dying, He could at l-ll-llleast get rid of this s-ss-stupid ss-ssTUTTER!!”. She would be someone who was doing all the things she was supposed to be doing, but when it really came down to it, she would have had a real internal struggle that would have been incredibly to see unfold. But no, she just has to be the one-note, perfect church girl from start to finish with no growth or development. Her moment of bravery isn’t a matter of bravery at all; telling Marcie what she thought didn’t cost her anything, or have the threat of doing so.
Squirrel admits his fraudulent timeclock punching, but coerces his coworker friend into doing the same. This is another missed opportunity. Let Squirrel do it alone and get fired, while his friend keeps his job. Let his friend ask why he admitted it and took the heat. The ensuing discussion could involve Squirrel saying he did the right thing even though it cost something, and that he was trusting in God to provide for him. The friend could see this, and then go to the boss and admit he was doing it as well, and go to bat to get Squirrel rehired. This would show how Squirrel’s influenced caused his friend to make his own choice, and even allow an opportunity for Squirrel to share the Lord…but instead the scene uses force and Squirrel gives an ultimatum to someone who doesn’t share his commitment, and we’re okay with that?
Teddy…stops making fun of Natalie. Great, but he’s gotten less positive reinforcement from everyone over time so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice. It didn’t take much for Natalie to end up being more receptive to Teddy at the same time Shannon pushed him away, so Teddy just switched allies. What would have been far better would have been for Teddy to have had a crush on Shannon and having started the movie with Teddy doing Shannon’s bidding to try and win her affection, with Teddy’s big moment being him telling Shannon off, realizing he had no shot with her as a result, and then having to reconcile with a Natalie who is still incredibly guarded and ends the movie willing to be civil with him at best.
Marcie is Shannon’s patsy, but for no defined reason. Throughout the movie there is no indication that Shannon has any leverage on Marcie, they don’t really seem to do anything fun together, and Marcie seems to lack any other friends while also shown as being able to just start being friends with Teddy and Squirrel on the spot. Marcie’s shift away from Shannon was supposed to be her big deal, but Shannon’s popularity was waning and she already had new friends as a result, so it wasn’t a sacrifice by the time Marcie decided to take her stand.
Then there’s Shannon, the movie’s attempt to have a Regina George character, except she lacked her nuanced moments, charisma, sex appeal, or social authority. A clawless cat if there ever was one. What did she spend her massive allowance on? We never see. Why did Marcie have loyalty to her, but nobody else does? We aren’t told. Why do her parents tolerate her disrespect but also incentivize her going to church? It’s unclear. Shannon put Vaseline on a chair. Regina called the parents of her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s parents and pretended to be Planned Parenthood, breaking up their relationship and making the girl a social pariah. Shannon is what happens when writers of Christian movies try to involve conflict while also trying to avoid showing a sinful thing in a movie – we end up with a character whose salt has lost its saltiness.
Let’s discuss Shannon’s false accusation. We, the audience, know nothing happened…but nobody else does. The #metoo and #believeher movements have their problems on both sides, but on what basis does the whole youth group take the pastor’s side? We the audience know nothing happened, but they don’t. Are they defending him simply because “he would never do such a thing?” That’s the root of the issue at hand, but how come literally nobody even attempts to consider if Shannon was right? They went after Shannon for information but nobody tried to put the pastor through the ringer? When they tricked Shannon into confessing, how come none of them used their smartphones to get an audio or video recording of her saying it so they could prove it to the people in charge? Why not have a text message exchange so they could use screenshots as evidence of the lie to show to the senior pastor and Shannon’s mom? Also, the church across town was perfectly fine having him despite knowing the circumstances and controversy around his departure?
It would have been far more interesting if they showed Shannon walking out the door behind everyone else, then walking back in the room and having the screen fade to black with the audience never seeing what exactly happened. If I wanted to double down, it would have been particularly interesting to do a sort of flashback scene regarding both accounts of the story, one from the pastor where the apology happens, and another from Shannon’s point of view where she successfully seduces him, leaving the reader to figure to spend a little time debating who to believe…but of course, it would have been much more controversial, and if there’s one thing this movie can’t handle, it’s giving the audience something to think about….and also, it wouldn’t have driven the plot because then there would be a genuine cause for a schism.
I’ll close by talking about the actual dialog itself. The script had so many smaller issues with how the characters talked to each other. People walk into the room to have a discussion, they begin with some thoroughly mundane thing that nobody cares about, and then they change topics to the real thing worth discussing. Does Marcie’s mother always announce when she’s got laundry for her? Did the script really need three lines of dialog between the pastor and his wife about the logistics of returning the shirt? Did Squirrel and his coworker always have to reiterate the plan in an expository manner immediately before they carried it out? So much cringey dialog was present throughout the movie. Virtually every character did it…except, ironically, the one with the stutter. The Moses parallel was obvious it was coming the moment the stutter was introduced, the Joseph foreshadowing was heavy handed, and the theme verse only meaningfully made sense at the end which made it clear they were chosen for plot purposes. I almost have an objection to the Bible being used purely to add literary conventions to such a poorly written script. It was obvious the car wash at the end was coming the moment there was a discussion about the bet being one-sided. Beth trying to get the girls to interact more nicely together “because she said so” demonstrated how out of touch the writers were with how kids actually interact. Even as adults, did nobody think about how they would feel if someone was suddenly nice to them because an authority figure coerced them? There were just so many examples of poorly constructed dialog and annoyingly worded exposition that it made me wish they just started quoting the King James Bible again.
In conclusion, I simply couldn’t conjure up any grace for this movie. If it was 1999, maybe…but for all its other flaws, 1999’s Left Behind Movie benefited from Jerry B. Jenkins’ excellent source material, making it a layup to have a script written without cringe-inducing dialog. I had issues with God’s Not Dead, but even those script writers seemed to have been involved in a conversation at some point. Play the Flute was about an oblivious pastor, a paint-by-numbers youth group that failed miserably at character development, and a goal that only makes sense to a church audience while also being called an “evangelical tool” by a group of people who had no concept of how people interact in real life.
Sorry, 3/10 would not recommend to anyone…and those three points all go to the production crew.
Edits 4/17/2019 – some rewording for readability and clarity.
I could not have disagreed with you more. I found the movie very moving and refreshing. So much reminded me of the youth groups I went to and
the ones my kids went to. We had very good Christian leadership and kids from various lifestyles. My life was changed by the kind of leadership the pastor of the movie had.
Hey there Donna!
I grew up in a youth group as well, though admittedly, my experience was fundamentally different than the movie. 100-200 kids attending on a Wednesday night was common, which necessarily makes things different than the dozen-or-so attendance levels depicted here.
Sorry-not-sorry, I had the best youth pastor ever =). Amongst the reasons I say this is because he was (and is) an extremely genuine person. He got to know everyone as best he could, students and leaders alike. There was as much mentorship as there was leadership, and there was a good balance between teaching and fun events. I am glad for that stage in my life, and I’m glad you had that sort of life-altering experience growing up, too.
It’s been a few years since I wrote this, but I think that the majority of the failures that bothered me had less to do with the leadership and more to do with how the students were depicted. Motivations weren’t clear, behavior wasn’t justified, and logical consequences tended to be sidestepped. None of these issues imply an issue with good pastoral leadership, especially in youth ministry. I will, however, express a clear desire for this movie to have done a better job at withstanding scrutiny.
Somewhere in my drafts folder, I’ll get around to wrapping up a draft I started a few years ago. I was thinking about how sometimes Christians, in an attempt to sanitize things, do so to our own detriment. My go-to example is the Veggietales episode “King George and the Ducky”. Essentially, my concern is that what makes the story of David and Bathsheba so compelling is how messy the story actually was. David’s laziness, lustfulness, entitlement, deceit, and the unfathomable audacity to send Uriah back to the battle carrying his own death warrant…it’s the sort of situation that’s so messed up, that God not only forgiving David, not only redeeming him and Bathsheba, but to make Bathsheba specifically the woman through whom David’s bloodline would ultimately carry the Messiah, is absolutely awe inspiring. Love Veggietales as I do, turning that story into one involving food fights and rubber duckies makes the story sanitary enough to show to six year olds, but makes it seem like “it wasn’t that bad”. Trivializing the terribleness of the situation inherently limits the understanding of the redemptive power of God’s mercy and grace.
When “Play the Flute” spends its time making the worst action of the main antagonist a mostly-harmless prank, when the “don’t have sex outside of marriage” is combined with the married couple lacking any physical chemistry, when the redemption arcs are all completely predictable a mile away, and when the only reason the pastor’s false accusation arc leaves no reason for contemplation is because the audience was in the room when it happened while nobody in charge of making the decision was afforded the same clarity…what we end up with is a film so focused on keeping a G-rating that its sole redeeming values are nostalgia for folks like us, and a depiction of a pastor who manages to show genuine care and concern for the students in his care. These are good things, but there is much potential that got lost in the mix.
I’ll close by saying that, since I wrote this, “Play The Flute” has competition for its title: “Priceless”. I’d still give “Play The Flute” the top spot simply due to its theme coming across as ‘guilt students into not-doing bad’ while “Priceless” thematically shines a light at human trafficking, but “Priceless” is a strong contender due to the main character making literally every possible mistake. Between not asking questions when it’s clear he should, the complete lack of wisdom, trusting every un-trustworthy person, paying the wrong people, putting literally everyone around him in danger, making so many mistakes that a first semester law student would get the antagonists exonerated due to lack of evidence…it’s the sort of movie that feels good as long as the viewer isn’t terribly concerned with the long term consequences.
I hope all is well; thanks for stopping by!
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At least kissing or dating!!!!? that’s the perspective of people who are not truly rooted into the word of God, every movie you go move as you think or as you would like. But the word of God is not about what we like but it about truth and many times the fresh dislikes truth.
Hello Sebugwawo! It means a lot that you’ve stopped by – I have an international audience now! =)
The point I was making with my statements of this nature had to do with the fact that the movie seems inconsistent in its portrayal of the students. In most youth groups I’ve participated in, there’s at least a few students romantically interested in each other. Now, your point is valid that students whose focus is primarily on God are unlikely to be focused on things of the flesh, but that’s sort of my point as well. The movie tries to depict the students as if they are not living out their faith, and yet all of them act in a perfectly Christ-like manner around their peers in this context. It comes across to me as disingenuous and dilutes the message as a result.
Thank you again for stopping by, good sir! Blessings to you and your family!
I believe you are very very wrong in your perceptions! I believe the movie was very good and very true to today’s youth and as far as the numbers and events I do believe that to many churches today do tend to have their focus in the wrong direction.
Hey there, Rick! Welcome to my slice of the internet!
I’d be interested in hearing more specific criticisms of my assessment. In the absence of them, I’ll distill a handful into questions.
On the topic of churches raising up the next generation of believers, do you believe the movie depicted an effective means of evangelism? Do you believe it reflected the goodness and forgiveness of God in a way that didn’t manifest as guilt?
On the topic of relationships, do you believe there was an effective depiction of marriage? Do you believe the movies’ commitment to a G-rating undermining its ability to even imply sexual desire between any married couple was to the benefit of its message of celibacy? Do you believe the wife should have stuck by her husband when he was accused of molesting a teenager, for which no evidence was shown and for which there were no additional witnesses?
On the topic of parental involvement, are there any parents you would cite as being positive role models for an adult following Christ who isn’t on the church’s payroll?
But ultimately, my criticism comes down to the screenplay making too much effort to play it safe. I’m not saying I would expect an actual sex scene or profanity or anything like that, but everything seemed so edgeless as to undermine its point. For me, it brings to recollect the Veggietales episode where they retell the story of David and Bathsheba. Rubber duckies and pies make for humorous moments and Sunday School approval, but the sanitizing of the story limits the depth of David’s sin, the necessity of his repentance, and the sheer volume of grace bestowed upon Him by God. When Play the Flute uses harmless pranks to show ‘sin’, and playground insults to show ‘conflict’, it seems to choose to do so at the expense of reflecting a need for the young people to receive the grace they too need to atone for their sins.
I’m certainly open to hearing more of what you have to say on the topic, Rick! It looks like you hail from Ohio; if that’s the case, welcome, and thank you for expressing yourself here!
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I stopped reading your take on this movie after the “he was shocked, SHOCKED part, I think that you are the one that this was lost on. I loved this movie, as a grandmother raising two grandchildren in the church and recognizing the same disingenuous faith in my church youth group. The movie was sort of a wake up call to the youth in the church. It’s kind of like a “mean what you say and say what you mean” type of thing. I don’t know anything about you so I don’t even know if you are a professing Christian, but anyone that is a true believer wants the youth to get it, to walk in spirit and in truth, to apply the Bible principles to their life, and to live that out in their lives! The Holy Bible says in Revelation that the LORD doesn’t like ” luke warm”, the LORD will spit you out of His mouth. That my dear, was the point of the movie.
Hi there Donna!
I’m sorry for the late reply; your comment got flagged as spam, so I was glad to have caught it.
It sounds like we agree more than we do not! To answer your question, yes, I am a professing Christian. I similarly agree that a lukewarm faith isn’t faith at all according to Revelation (and elsewhere), so we can find common ground on the need for that matter to be addressed in church at each age bracket.
I think I can pinpoint our divergence though, and I’d submit that we may not diverge nearly as much as you might think! Foundationally, the pastor seemed to roll in and assume a “saved audience”. He seemed to assume that his group of students had already embraced their faith for themselves, and were not still in the “church kid” category where the young people attend church at the behest of their parents. In Shannon’s case, she was literally being paid to attend. The pastor’s approach to teaching the Bible hinged on his assumption of a saved audience. Rather than encouraging the students to pursue God and embrace His gift of salvation and lordship for themselves, he seems to focus on what amounts to behavior modification. I submit that this is somewhat counterproductive.
The first reason I say this is because Jesus spent a lot of time indicting the Pharisees for the outcome of what’s being suggested: the Pharisees kept the letter of the law, but their hearts were far from Him. There wasn’t a whole lot in the movie that encouraged the student to focus on heart changes, it was primarily outward appearances. I grew up in exactly this environment: those who raised their hands the highest and sang the loudest and prayed outwardly between sobs were the ones most likely to start rumors or cause enmity between friends…but it was done in secret and without a paper trail, so nothing could ever be proven, while everyone *saw* the outward appearances. This sort of duplicitousness wasn’t well explored in the movie, but it was a reality for me, and for others. To your point, we agree that God doesn’t like lukewarm…but outward behavior that is a matter of ‘image management’ is not Christ honoring. Sure, it’s not lukewarm, but that’s because it’s ‘cold’ and not ‘hot’. My contention with the movie wasn’t its critique of lukewarmness in youth groups, but instead its focus seeming to be satiated by the sort of behavior that Christ spoke against, in concert with its main character seeming to be oblivious to this by his approach to resolving the matter.
Thank you for stopping by, Donna! Blessings to you!
I personally enjoyed this movie and found it very moving. I also walked away with bits of of nuggets to ponder on. I am sorry that this movie was not good for you and that you may have expected more out of it and seemed to rate your expectations a bit high. Christian movie productions probably do not have the funds that traditional movie productions do therefore the “Oscar” worthy production is not going to be there. Christian movies should be clean and none sexual and none kissy and passionate. It’s meant to be clean and not erotic. I think we can all agree to disagree on our thoughts on this movie and any other Christian movie and we should stop comparing them to the trash portrayed in the movie theaters and on TV. Sincerely, Kourtney
Hi there Kourtney! Thanks for chiming in!
There’s certainly common ground to be had here…for starters, I certainly wasn’t expecting Play the Flute to be nominated for an Oscar. More to the point, given the films which have received one over the past several years, Play the Flute *not* getting nominated is probably the better award =).
I’d like to present two counterpoints for your consideration. The first is the financial justification for the film’s shortcomings. I spent a bit of time in film making circles at one point in my life, so I agree with your concern that production costs add up quickly. The majority of the exceptions I took, and the recommendations to resolve them, required very little change to be made. For the most part, it was a few lines of dialogue which would have altered the framing of the relevant topics. Nearly all of it could have been addressed in pre-production, and the films budget would be nominal.
The second counterpoint I’d like to address is this statement: “Christian movies should be clean and none sexual and none kissy and passionate.”. In a certain sense, we can actually find a bit of consensus: I’m not advocating for a full-on, PG-13 stretching love scene. Such a scene in this movie would distract from the message being conveyed, regardless of context. That being said, I’ve got a few thoughts to share here. First, the Bible itself isn’t exactly “clean”…you can’t get past Genesis without encountering a whole lot of stories that, ironically, could never be made into a “Christian movie”. Second, I advocated for some level of passion between a husband and a wife, especially a husband and a wife who spend screen time advocating celibacy prior to marriage. When a married couple says to wait until marriage, and then spends zero time even implying that their marriage is anything but sexless, it does a disservice and undermines their stated goals. Finally, it seemed incredibly disingenous to have a group of teenagers who were wishy-washy about their faith when the script demanded it, but this same group of teenagers, collectively, had zero desire to sin in this way. I’m not saying we need to be explicit, but I am saying that the only place that those two things can coexist is in the script of a “Christian movie”, and that coexistence undermines what it’s trying to say.
Thanks again for stopping by, Kourtney! I’m grateful for your participation in this discussion!
You are way off base and do not even understand the message of that was being given by this movie. The main message was that when the word of God comes in people’s lives are changed. The Bible itself says blaze a child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it.
I’m going to pray for you because you apparently only see the negative in every situation, it must be hard to live a life like that, because with that there is no faith or hope. I suggest you stop looking at the problem and start looking at the Problem Solver!
You need to read the Great commision found in Matthew 28:19-20! My question for you is this our Jesus last words and instructions your first priority in your life? I believe this film displays that, and someone willing to walk alongside those who are willing to change. Salvation is a choice, our job is to go and tell an instruct making disciples and that is exactly what this film has portrayed.
We enjoyed this movie a lot. It’s nice to have options other than what H offers, media that encourages one’s heart toward Christ, which this one did – even with it’s flaws. Thank you for producing it!
Good evening Laura!
…I personally didn’t produce the movie, nor am I affiliated with anyone who did…but I’m glad you and your family/group enjoyed it just the same!
The movie used the new King James Version, which does justice to translation rather than those watered down transliterations.
This message was directed to young people who go to church who aren’t Christian’s which could be a considerable target audience. I felt your review was off base, written from the point of view that you assumed was the purpose and especially since you were confused about what movie you were even seeing
The message was heartfelt – spiritually strong and convicting to reach someone who is complacent in his or her decision to follow Christ. Since many churches are often offended by Gods Word I can see that many would reject this movie because it doesn’t “tickle” their ears. Well done Rick Christiano.
I’ll pray for you. The 3 out of 10 rating would have to come from a bad place. A 10 for me, but not a 3 for anyone that loves goodness. Praying for you…
Hi there Randal!
I always appreciate it when people pray for me.
I very much love goodness, and it is *because* I love goodness that I am as critical of this movie as I am.
Would the desire for the married couple in this movie to express desire for their spouse not come from a place of wanting goodness? Would the desire for the film to have better balance when toeing the line about a he-said-she-said situation not come from a place of goodness? Would it not be a desire for goodness to have an expectation that a Christian acting in a spirit of repentance would lead by example when reconciling? Would it not be a desire for goodness to be the root of someone’s choice to follow Christ despite tragic loss, rather than hand-waving it away?
I promise that I was not in a bad place when I wrote this blog entry, and I’m not in a bad place now. I do, however, both love goodness and desire for Christian filmmakers to better demonstrate biblical principles (including goodness) to their audiences.
Thank you for your visit!