Delayed Reaction: Heaven is Real

What I Guessed It Was About: A skeptic's son has a near-death experience, sees heaven, and slowly makes a believer out of his father and the small town they're certain to live in.

How I Came Into It: The title is the mission statement, so there's not much to guess about this. I won't pretend that I'm the target audience for this. I was curious why this, over all the other faith-based movies is the one that did so well. It's worth seeing the movie to figure that out.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) As far as I can tell, the thing that sets the movie apart is Oscar Nominee Greg Kinnear. He's the best thing in the movie by far. It's really not all that long either. I've said it before. I appreciate a movie that can say what it needs to say in 90 minutes.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I'll go ahead and ignore that the plot is overly saccharine and the "evidence" that heaven is real is a pretty weak coincidence (Oh, and white Jesus was a good touch). No, what I'd like to focus on is that it's amazing how cheap this movie is. There's clearly money to be made in the faith & spirituality market if a movie that looks this much like a Hallmark movie can make $90 million in the box office. How much longer before someone sinks $50 million to make Left Behind semi-properly or something. I'm not rooting for this, but it's strange that no one's taken that chance yet.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend