God’s Not Dead 2 (2016)
Directed by: Harold Cronk
Premise: A sequel to the 2014 film. A high school history teacher (Melissa Joan Hart) answers a student’s question about Jesus. This gets her in trouble with school administration and she must go to court to fight for her job and her religious rights.
What Works: Despite the many problems of God’s Not Dead 2,
most of the actors acquit themselves. The picture is led by Melissa
Joan Hart as a teacher who unwittingly steps onto a cultural third rail
and becomes a social pariah. Hart brings a credible middle class
weariness to the part that makes the character likable. Also notable is
Hayley Orrantia as the student whose question lands the instructor in
hot water. Orrantia’s character is a teenager struggling with the big
questions about life and she plays the role well.
What Doesn’t: Like its 2014 predecessor, God’s Not Dead 2
is a polemic. It’s a movie with a message and that message is intended
for an audience that is primed to receive it. It’s not a movie for
non-believers or even those of a vague or nuanced faith; God’s Not Dead 2
is intended to affirm a pre-existing worldview: that religious freedom,
and particularly Christianity, is under attack by secular forces.
Making a polemical movie isn’t necessarily a bad thing; Inherit the Wind and Network are also polemics but their arguments are presented with style, wit, and intelligence. God’s Not Dead 2
has none of those qualities. The movie is primarily a courtroom drama
and right away the premise of this story doesn’t make sense. Why is
this taking place in a courtroom? This isn’t a criminal matter. The
American Civil Liberties Union are the plaintiffs (on behalf of the
school district) but if anyone should be filing a lawsuit it is the
history teacher for wrongful termination. From that muddled beginning, God’s Not Dead 2
moves into its argument. The opposition, which are primarily school
administrators and big city lawyers, are all characterized as smug
anti-theists who want to remove all references to Jesus from the public
square. Character assassination is par for the course in a movie like
this but the arguments are stupid; the whole prosecution is a straw man
argument that even a high school civics student should see through.
That is a shame because the premise of God’s Not Dead 2 is
actually promising. The conflict of this story is built upon a
fundamental misunderstanding of what rights people have and
specifically what rights a teacher does or does not have in the
classroom. This is a relevant and complex topic but the filmmakers of God’s Not Dead 2
are not interested in nuance. All the Christians are good, everyone
else is evil, and there is no equivocation between them. When the
defense makes its case, the film really gets confused. This is
initially supposed to be a defense of religious freedom but it veers
into another realm entirely. Instead of explaining civil liberties, the
defense makes a case for the historical existence of Jesus. In this
respect, God’s Not Dead 2 reveals its true self. This film
isn’t really a piece of drama nor is it even an argument; the movie
exists as an infomercial for faith-based products and the story
shoehorns in several real-life people to hawk their work even though it
is irrelevant to the story. J. Warner Wallace, author of Cold Case Christianity, and Rice Broocks, author of God’s Not Dead and Man, Myth, Messiah,
show up in the movie and testify to the historical fact of Jesus’
existence. The music group Newsboys performs their brand of Christian
rock in cutaways that have nothing to do with the rest of the story.
Aside from its absurd arguments, God’s Not Dead 2 also fails as
a piece of cinema. The sound is frequently terrible, the production
values are cheap, and the story is padded with all sorts of extraneous
storylines that never come to a conclusion.
Bottom Line: God’s Not Dead 2 is a polemic and it’s not a very good one. The filmmakers presume to be interested in religion and civil rights but the movie demonstrates that they understand neither. The picture fails as an argument but also as a piece of cinema.
Episode: #590 (April 10, 2016)