God’s Not Dead running time: 113 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Director: Harold Cronk

Can a movie prove that “God’s Not Dead”?

God’s Not Dead is a Christianity-based movie with several distinct characters whose paths intersect at the end of the movie during a Newsboys concert.

The main story follows pre-law student Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper), a freshman who is enrolled in an infamous philosophy class taught by atheist professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo). Upon arriving at this class, the teacher instructs the class to write “God is dead” on a piece of paper with their signature and return it to him. Haughty Radisson says that the purpose is to better understand the class with less conflict about whether there is a God or not, so they can focus primarily on philosophy. Other stories are also followed but developed later on in the movie.

These subplots include a Muslim girl who gets kicked out of her home for believing in Jesus, an atheist journalist who finds out she has cancer and her businessman boyfriend who proceeds to dump her after she announces her terminal illness. This businessman has a sister who is dating a philosophy professor that we may have met before, and these two siblings have a mom with dementia who occasionally spouts gospel in between moments of confusion. Lastly, there is a young pastor and his missionary friend who just can’t seem to make it to Disney Land, and later discover the higher purpose for their car refusing to start. The subplots are dramatic and stereotypical, especially by portraying the Muslim religion to be unaccepting of Christianity.

The scientific evidence provided in the movie (and by Josh in his philosophy class) is compelling, though the presentations he created for the class seem far-fetched for a busy pre-law student. In fact, “far-fetched” is a good way to describe the entire movie. Some of the separate stories are melodramatic, as the story suggests that Christians are being persecuted in schools and universities by science teachers who justify the creation of the universe with the Big Bang theory, and attribute mankind to evolution. Josh goes on to explain, however, that these theories are both possible if God was the one behind each event.

Though melodramatic and far-fetched at some points, I do think that this Christian movie has interesting and convincing claims about the existence of God.