Heaven is for Real Movie Review

My wife and I watched the movie Heaven is for Real last night starring Greg Kinnear based on the book and true story of a little boy who had a near death experience and claims to have visited heaven.  Overall I’d say the movie was okay.  It wasn’t great and it wasn’t bad, it was just okay.  The strengths of the movie were the acting skills of Greg Kinnear who played Todd Burpo, a Nebraskan pastor and father of Conner (the boy who had the near death experience), Thomas Haden Church, and Margo Martindale who played church board members and friends of the Burpo family.  At first it looked like they were going to make a few of the main characters one dimensional, but I was pleased they avoided that pit and gave them some depth.  As a follower of Christ I have no doubts of the reality of life after death so I found the parts of the movie focusing on Conner’s experiences intriguing and encouraging.  I also really liked that the movie centered on God being love without clouding the issue.  And since I believe God loves us so much he meets with us where we’re at, in our reality, I had no hang ups about the Burpo’s religious views and activities. 

Where the movie really fell down was surrounding the point of conflict.  Since the movie was based on a true account that was turned into a movie the writers had to come up with a conflict to make the movie entertaining, otherwise it would’ve been better to simply make a documentary.  The problem is the conflict was just not believable.  (Minor Spoiler Alert: stop reading if you don’t want anything to be given away.)  The conflict was that people were having a hard time believing what Conner had witnessed.  This included the church board members and even the parents. Now that would work for me if they were atheists or agnostics, but these were church going people.  Conner’s story confirmed their beliefs.  The number one concern with the majority of Christians is heaven.  In fact, the subject of heaven is probably the LEAST offensive subject to Christians.  No matter what denomination or non-denomination, they all agree on the existence of heaven.  I’m certain that’s why the book on which the movie was based was number one on the New York Times best sellers list.  It’s the “how to get to heaven” and “who will be there?” where Christians start splintering into factions.  But I don’t know of a single Christian group that doubts the existence of heaven.  In fact, one of the problems some Christians have is they act like the whole point of life is just to die and go to heaven.

This is what makes the point of conflict in the movie unbelievable and quite ridicules.  The parents and church members would have eaten up Conner’s story.  They would’ve been begging him to tell them more.  Instead they’re aloof and suspicious.  The family even encounters minor “persecution” over it.  The “persecution” was so forced it came across as downright corny and made me cringe.  Getting persecuted for something with which the majority of people agree?  BIZAAR!  It felt like the movie makers were pandering to their audience. “Let’s make the average Joe church goer feel like a spiritual powerhouse for believing in heaven.”  Wow!  Such a controversial topic!  Don’t ever say you believe in heaven in mixed company – who knows what people might do!?  And while you’re at it how about having the kid get persecuted for talking about footage he saw of astronauts landing on the moon.  Whoa! This is edgy dangerous stuff here! Nothing will get you persecuted faster than believing what everybody else does – NOT! 

The conflict was nothing but a “straw man.”  This made it impossible to get emotionally invested in their struggles.  The mom’s aloofness followed by her overreactions to her son’s stories was so unbelievable it was like watching somebody get emotional about paint drying.  I found myself detached from the characters.

The other problem I had with the movie was the way it constantly pointed to the church building as being the center of spiritual life and the source through which all spiritual activity occurs.  Jesus made it very clear that we, his people, are his temple.  He dwells in those who follow him.  He meets with us right where we’re at, not on some “sacred ground” as in the old covenant.  But I realize this was merely reflecting the wide spread accepted tradition of many Christians today.

So there you have it.  Heaven is for Real is an okay movie.  But it can make for some good conversations afterward.  So that alone may make it worth your while.