God's Not Dead Movie Review

First off you need to know that we don't go to movies, but 2 times a year. My husband thinks it's more entertaining to watch me as I watch the movie, than the actual show itself. I talk to the screen and really get into what is going on often blurting out, "what a jerk" or some such other exclamation. I certainly did that a few times during this movie.

A story of faith, and defending the faith, is what I would call this movie. Our hero Josh is a young Christian gone off to college with his girlfriend. He has enrolled in pre law, and she seems to have a fairytale dream of what life is supposed to be like. When Josh won't sign a paper his philosophy asks the class to sign, "In order to get God out of the way and move on to more important things", Josh says no. So the challenge is given for him to prove God exists, in three 20 minute segments of class. He puts his college career on the line, his so called sweetheart dumps him, and yet he still goes forward. There are a couple of sub plots within the main one that all tie together in the end. I liked that it wasn't a rabid view point from either side, and actually portrayed how people can either be for or against God.

There were a couple of hokey scenes, one in which Josh's girlfriend of 6 years gives him an ultimatum right off the bat regarding defending his stand on God. She dumps him far too quickly. Again when the young woman finds out she has cancer and her boyfriend immediately dumps her when she tells him, was a bit too fast. Over all we got the idea though, first, that Josh's girlfriend was more interested in not having her fairytale dream of life disrupted by actually having to stand for right, and possibly have that dream get delayed. When the young woman tells Mark that she has cancer, it shows the shallowness of many of today's relationships in the way he summarily dismisses her as a "toy" that was fun to play with, but now that the "toy" is broken he is moving on.

The movie over all was well done, with fantastic casting on the part of the characters. I don't want to give away all the good stuff, so I will just say, go see it. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I  was pleasantly surprised at how the over all topic of defending the faith was handled. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.