Technical assessment: 3
Moral assessment: 4
CINEMA rating: VA
MTRCB rating: G
DIRECTOR: Randall
Wallace LEAD CAST:
Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly,
Connor Corum, Lane Styles, Margo Martindale, Thomas Haden Church, SCREENWRITER: Chris Parker (adaptation from the book Heaven is for Real)
PRODUCER:
Joe Roth, T.D. Jakes
MUSICAL
DIRECTOR: Nick
Glennie-Smith CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dean Semier
GENRE: Drama DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Entertainment
LOCATION:
United States RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
In
Imperial Nebraska, bills never seem to end for Todd and Sonja Burpo (Greg
Kinnear and Kely Reilly), parents of 10-year-old Cassie (Lane Styles) and
four-year-old Colton (Connor Corum).
Todd is a well-liked pastor at the Crossroads Wesleyan Church but his
main source of income is his work as an electrical repairman; Sonja is a
full-time housewife and choirmaster.
They’re deep in debts and when Todd gets hospitalized for a broken leg
and kidney stones, the situation seems to swallow them like quicksand. As if it weren’t bad enough, their son
suffers a ruptured appendix, calling for surgery and causing more hospital
bills. Life seems to turn for the
worst when Colton, recovering against the odds, starts telling his parents stories
of going to heaven, seeing Jesus and angels singing to him while he was under
surgery, meeting long-dead relatives he never met. The stories attract the press, disturbing some parishioners
who feel that their church is turning into a circus. The financial and emotional burden adversely affects Todd’s
preaching, further upsetting the community’s skeptics who move to have him
replaced as its pastor.
In
this fact-based drama adapted from New York Times bestseller “Heaven is for
Real”, heaven unfolds through the eyes of a child, which the CGI aptly
supports: heaven is a place of light and beauty among the clouds but is located
somewhere beyond the sacristy; angels are ethereal winged beings of light with
such delightful laughter; Jesus sports a beard, bushy eyebrows, and “greenish
blue eyes”. Also, Colton says
nobody wears eyeglasses in heaven, and “everybody’s young there”. Semler’s cinematography happily brings
out the charm of the Midwestern farm country, and blended with the sensible CGI
makes for a realistic setting for the theme. Minus some melodramatic moments that could be taken as the
natural outcome of the characters’ incredulity, the movie is well-acted,
effectively bringing out the crisscrossing viewpoints surrounding the question
of near death experience. A big
factor contributing to the accessibility of Heaven is for real is its
casting—had it used big name stars it would have been a flop. It’s the ordinary-people quality of the
actors that works for the credibility of the story. Colton’s actor, the adorable 6-year-old Corum, is born for
the role.
The
mature handling of a sensitive issue—the existence of an afterlife—makes Heaven
is for real an effective tool of faith-examination without off-putting
preachiness. It considers heaven but
also focuses on relationships on earth: father-son bonding, strong sibling
ties, a tenacious marriage that won’t be shattered by crisis. The little boy asks his father “They
don’t believe me, do they?” but goes on guilelessly telling his stories. He is right, almost everybody tends to
dismiss his experience as little boy’s tales, including his mother who, at
breaking point over Todd’s obsession with their son’s experience, yells at her
husband that everything the boy says is nothing but “an echo” of the
environment he grew up in. But
again heaven asserts itself when Colton softly tells his mom that (in heaven) “I
saw my sister who died in your tummy without a name”. “How could he have known that?”, a bewildered Sonja
asks Todd. Heaven is for real
is a movie that crosses denominational boundaries because the desire for an
afterlife is almost universal, touching people of all cultures or
civilizations. It is a hope-giving
statement that echoes the bible’s Psalm 8 “Out of the mouth of babes and
infants You have drawn a defense against Your foes, to silence enemy and
avenger.”
