Friday 30 May 2014

"Heaven is For Real" (The Guardian 30/05/14)


Heaven is for Real **
Dir: Randall Wallace. With: Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Thomas Haden Church. 99 mins. Cert: PG

After Easter’s shrill Sunday-school project God’s Not Dead, this latest spot of cinevangelism at least sports a theatrical heft: sometime Mel Gibson collaborator Randall Wallace directs, and ever-steady Greg Kinnear stars as real-life Wesleyan pastor/firefighter Todd Burpo (oh, hush), whose four-year-old son emerged from appendicitis claiming proofs of the afterlife. Wallace permits some debate as to what this tale represents – miracle? Horror show? Evidence of declining anaesthesiology standards? – yet that titular conclusion depends entirely on faith: what’s on screen peters out with a God-knows shrug before passing off a Lithuanian child’s painting as a photofit of Jesus. It looks a lot like Andrew “Lonely Boy” Gold

Heaven is For Real opens in selected cinemas from today.

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