Crapshoot 2017: All My Friends are Heathens

Forgive them audiences, for they know not what they do.

Let’s be honest here; if you’re going to bother taking more than a passing glance at this article in the interest of pursuing actual content, than you probably aren’t the indoctrinated fundamentalist nutcases that would find this tripe “inspiring” regardless of the murder of acceptable storytelling that even school children could write a thesis in crayon on for all of its non-theological errors.

Assuming that for even a second, that would hopefully mean that coming out and saying this critique on films that fail on almost every level of which they were conceived for is not an indictment of religion, theology or any philosophical lifestyle, nor does it pass judgment on those that follow said ideas and the many forms that they take worldwide, is a redundant statement that should be assumed when looking at the nature of this criticism and within the context of my previous work.

Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Atheist; whatever you identify as for whatever your reasons, this is not an assault on you or your beliefs. This is merely a text based face-palming of stupid people that have made stupid decisions and given birth to stupid products.

2 years ago, I covered the original “God’s Not Dead” on this very series.

Despite referring to it as a disgustingly shortsighted piece of propaganda coming from notions of vanity counterintuitive to the actual teachings of Christ, I can’t help but grant it a bit of retroactive faint praise upon sitting through its sequel.

“God’s Not Dead” may have been hypocritical and morally tasteless manipulative trash serving as noise for the echo chamber that it was produced in but it did at least functionally serve the purpose of propaganda; it used the basics of traditional narrative to paint a picture loosely resembling our idealized reality in which the agenda of pushing its theological superiority was insidiously seeded throughout every action of the film.

“God’s Not Dead 2” manages to fail even in that regard. As irrational as straw man atheist Kevin Sorbo pushing his agenda in the middle of a college class was and despite unrealistically dragging out an incident that would be shut down within days to a semester long debate, it at least made sense to capitalize on the fears of people in a changing world via demonizing the changes that they must grow accustomed to while lionizing their own faith as infallible truth.

What little basis in reality the first film had is now jettisoned.

“God’s Not Dead 2” follows Melissa Joan Hart as a high school teacher targeted by a cabal of evil liberal lobbyists out to make an example of her for essentially saying “the bible is a thing that teaches stuff” in a history class.

This is not hyperbole nor is it overly simplified. It is the actual plot of the film.

The original movie may have critically failed to research anything subject matters that had to do with its many scattershot subplots but it at least created a semi-plausible scenario in which theological debate could be discussed. This is not the case in the sequel, which was so thirsty to demonize even vaguely left wing ideology that its own tact doesn’t even make sense.

“God’s Not Dead 2” believes that the freedom of religious expression is so at stake that the law would slap financial penalty and jail time upon a teacher that simply says Jesus in a classroom. This is a film that asks pastors of churches to allow government to see the transcripts of their sermons, not to ensure political neutrality upon a people that can be swayed by forces that they trust, but because old, leatherfaced, liberal lawmakers have inherited the resources of the Legion of Doom, intent on shaping a world in their own faith-free image.

All of the follies of the first film, such as oppressed minorities ostracized for having mild fascination with outside religions receiving nothing but love and comfort from their Christian overlords return but as I watched this one play out, more dawned on me than the mere idea that these audiences are living in a warped sense of reality.

Namely, that they don’t want to see cries for equality for what they are; EQUALITY. Just because you can’t push your beliefs on anybody in a professional environment doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to spread the word elsewhere and continue to worship yourself.

America’s cultural makeup is quickly shifting and many religions, not just Christianity, are finding themselves in need some sort of evolution in order to stay relevant with the culture.

It requires time, understanding, open dialogue, sacrifice, and compassion; keeping religion relevant would require many patrons, both leaders and congregations alike, to take the moral high road. These are things that “God’s Not Dead 2” and many of its fellow Pure Flix productions are not interested in.

Rather than mingle with and learn from the world around them, providing an opportunity for Christianity to be enriched by fresh perspectives as it itself enriches the lives of its followers, the creators of this series are more content to stay inside of their bubble and watch it all fall apart because when the world begins to leave you behind it takes true strength to adapt.

Instead of mustering the will and compassion to that however, it’s far easier to blame the world for losing the privilege you took for granted and lorded over others and complain about you world getting smaller rather than taking advantage of the reality that the actual world is just getting bigger.

By the time the damn thing ended, it was so pitifully inept and predictable in its respective execution and endgame that the only real pain and irritation I got out of it was realizing that Ernie Hudson’s career actually could get lower than it already was.

If there’s any cold comfort to be gathered by the sane regarding “God’s Not Dead 2” it’s that despite pulling in far more money than it deserved, it didn’t quite do the obscene amount of business that the first did.

While the implications of these movies are bad enough, the fervor surrounding them is the Christian equivalent of misguided slacktivism but don’t just take my own objective word for it. I’ve been fortunate enough to watch many of the religious films that I’ve covered on CritHit with a very dear friend of mine over the course of a couple of years.

I didn’t know when I started this little venture that by this time, he would be attending divinity school to pursue life as a preacher but I couldn’t happier for him for 2 reasons; he’s doing something worthwhile that he believes in and he puts my conscious at ease with regard to criticizing these types of movies when this is what he has to say about them:

“The popularity of the “God’s Not Dead” franchise confounds me. As a devoted Christian, I find no worth or value to these films. It bothers me that they have no substantial production while their theological statements are the shallowest interpretation of Christianity in general. It's really sad when a movie like “Silence,” with substantial direction and dialogue portraying real persecution, and not the “persecution” that these movies try to perpetuate, is swept under the rug and unsuccessful. If there is any movie that congregations need to be busing people to go see it's that, not Pure Flix movies like “War Room” and “Gods Not Dead 2.” The fact is that American Christians feel that they are being “persecuted” when in reality Christians are actually being persecuted under ISIS and all around the world.”

I’ll be frank; “Ben-Hur” is far from the single worst film of 2016 but dear lord is it the most hilariously misguided.

The 1959 film that most popularized the novel that I was based on is a well recognized masterpiece of cinema heralded for its scope, pacing, performances, and technical excellence culminating in one of the most iconic race/action sequences in cinema.

Following such a hard act would have been difficult under the most ideal of circumstances but I knew this film was in danger the second I checked its length and saw that the film clocked in at just less than 2 hours.

That isn’t to say that “Ben-Hur’s” tale of a young upper-class Jew setting out on a quest for revenge in order to gain the strength to learn forgiveness couldn’t be streamlined but when a film like this, so intent on showing off the lavish expenses sunken on admittedly impressive production values, can’t even dedicate to fully fleshing out its story in favor of using a sleepwalking Morgan Freeman’s narration to fill in the gaps, about half of the purpose of remaking a film nobody was asking to revisit goes straight out of the window.

It would be easy to write off “Ben-Hur” as a cynical studio project brought about by spit balling ideas for easy money based on name recognition and much of the film almost feels crafted with that in mind. The editing ranges from choppy to bland with a story missing chunks of character reflection that would add weight to the themes of the film.

Yet every time you begin to think that nobody involved with this film cared, certain oddities begin to rear their heads in ways that make the film almost laughably uneven.

Jack Huston does a passable Judah Ben-Hur and Toby Kebbell steals the show as his former friend and betrayer Messala, former cementing himself as an unfortunate actor that is wildly talented but with a string of bad projects.

Their performances and chemistry carry chunks of the movie farther than they should have gone were they carried by the rest of the production but the bizarre camera choices, ranging from rotating craning shots that never focus in on the faces of the actors to shoddy hand held camera work that cheapens the practical production at play and exacerbates some of the more blatant uses of CGI, sabotage most of the impact.

The misfire of this type of choice from a dramatic standpoint is self explanatory but I found myself laughing at these two talented actors bringing in their A game for shots that were more preoccupied with capturing walls and background landscapes than the facial reactions of its central characters locked in intimate conversation.

It’s little bizarre quirks like these that pepper the film and undercut everything the film aims to achieve; Morgan Freeman’s laughable narration serving as transition for the time skips, a recurring subplot involving Jesus spreading his beliefs so on the nose it feels like fottage spliced in from a 90s television movie, and even the frenetic camera work of the infamous chariot race makes it feel less like a race and more like an ancient “Death Race 2000” are all almost cartoonishly counterproductive to the strengths of the story and make a $100 million production feel cheaper than episodes of “Rome.”

All of these ill conceived choices culminate in an ending and a final shot that had me almost rolling over in laughter, as though the film thought that it was supposed to be some sort of feel good film all along.

On its own, the deserved failure of this movie, despite the ironic entertainment value that I derived from it, never truly angered me until I stopped and thought about it within the context of Paramount as a studio.

This is a studio that sunk all of this money into the production of a film that they barely bothered to market, along with an equal amount of money based on a concept pitched by the company president’s 4 year old son, and they will probably go on to release an upcoming “Transformers” sequel with twice the budget along with the 3 hour runtime that this film should have probably had from the start.

Hollywood might have a bit of a budgeting problem.