God's Club

Let me start with a brief summary: Christians start something harmless and Atheists go up in arms. This is the basic foundations for the movie and it has been repeated time and time again. As an atheist, I am extremely offended by this movie and the way they represent atheists. Literally, EVERY atheist character in this movie is intolerant, hateful, and (of course) evil. This is in no way a representation of the real world, even though this movie makes it seem like its happened before. Anyways enough ranting, what about the ACTUAL movie? Well, it also fails in that regard. The characters are flat and only one character really experiences change, and she was a minor character. The atheists respond to the Christian characters with complete and utter nonsense. The story isn't really compelling, it's mostly just a misrepresentation of a possible real life scenario.

This movie is one of those Christian propaganda pieces that fails to be a remotely good movie. The story is uninteresting and not compelling whatsoever, the characters are cardboard thin and predictable, and this is only topped by the unbelievable amount of bias towards Christians.

God is good all the time; all the time, God is good! Question what happens to you when you die? I believe that I want to be with God! Many of the most intelligent, scientific atheists have tried to prove Jesus did not die and was resurrected, and now they love JEsus and are believers... yay God!!!

The title says it all, God's Club. Join and/or support the club and God loves you. Don't think it has any place in public school than you are an enemy of the infinite Creator of Time, Space, and the Universe. Not someone you want mad at you.

Allison MacInnis and her husband Stephen Baldwin are teachers at a local high school somewhere in the Bible Belt. After a contentious school board meeting where her proposed Bible Club is discussed the two leave to go home and they are broadsided by another vehicle. MacInnis dies at the scene and Baldwin after an extended period of grief agrees to carry on. Of course those meanie secular humanists like Lorenzo Lamas oppose this because they see it as just a tool for evangelizing their kids.

Guess what, it sure looks like what Baldwin is doing is evangelizing the youth. Even Lamas's own son Nic Luken who is on anti-depression meds is buying into it. Of course the fact he's fallen for Baldwin's daughter Bridget Albaugh helps.

My belief is that if Christian kids want to have a Bible study club after school that's their business. But somehow I doubt that this same school is sponsoring a Gay/Straight Alliance group there. Gay kids are deep in the closet in this place no doubt. I'll bet Baldwin wouldn't want a GSA in his school. Probably Lamas wouldn't want one either.

It's the same fundamentalist message you see in so many of these films. We're the truth faith and we've got a duty to convert the world. You don't like it God will nail you good in the afterlife.

The sad thing is so many people buy into that in real life.

For some reason this was on Netflix and for some other reason my lady decided we should watch it so we could have a laugh at the expense of discount God's Not Dead. And make no mistake when I write those words, don't take it lightly, people: this is *discount* God's Not Dead. In every way shape and form this is about some alternate reality called Super-Scaredy-Cat-Christian-Pants land where the filmmakers see Christians as oppressed and all atheists as hard-headed scumbags who want to stop all of these good-hearted (sometimes, as in this case, seemingly broken) people from just practicing their religion in schools or colleges or who knows what else!

I mean, come on, people!

The problem here is that this has Stephen Baldwin. Let that also sink in: Stephen Baldwin, who has the voice of brother Alec, but his face looks like it's been run over by several angry water-buffalo and reconfigured to have the same expression all the time - even post car accident scene where character's wife dies in one of those goofy car accidents with him saying "my love" and "babe" in unconvincing ways - and he is the lead in this story that's supposed to be some inspiration pap about him overcoming his wife's death by setting up an *afterschool* Bible club. And the problem is.... huh? Oh, yeah, there's a couple of high schoolers who want to mess with the guy by making up some stuff in the Bible club, and then one guy (who you know is meant to be sexy to Baldwin's daughter because, oh God, his HAIR man!) who's father with the glued-on beard(!) is all against them because... FAITH MAN!

The conflicts here are wholly unconvincing - maybe also HOLY unconvincing too! Puns aside, this is such bland material, all acted and meant to be with sincerity, but it's badly performed and written and directed with a taste for dumb montages showing, uh, jogging, and, again I must stress here, STEPHEN BALDWIN! I think I could let his less than one dimensional character/performance go if there was something else to latch on to, some actor or person with a heart-beat with some craziness or personality or screen presence (i.e. God's Not Dead, much as that is an insulting mess, has Kevin Sorbo who makes the antagonist someone to reckon with). Here everything is so soft and safe but it's nevertheless a piece of tripe on just its filmmaking - even if you agree with this message (with, well, should I argue with that, we'd be here all night), the actual *cinema* part of it, that it's a 90 minute filmed piece of entertainment, fails on those grounds.

I frankly couldn't even finish this, so I can't tell you how it ends. If you get to a product like God's Club and it flatlines at minute one, odds are good it won't get a heartbeat. And lo and behold, this was unable to resuscitate even as a fun-bad movie. It's just... boring.

If you go through life attending prayer meetings, joining bible circles, "liking" the bible on social media, AND going to church every Sunday while looking for non-offensive things to be offended over ... well then this movie is for you. You'll completely enjoy the unrealistic scenario that doesn't ever happen and the over the top characterizations of the evil antagonists that, in reality, just think you shouldn't shove your religion down their throats or interject it into public education at the expense of the tax payer.

All in all there was a clear lack of character development with characters that were already as vanilla as vanilla can be. They started out "unquestionably" right, didn't need to learn a thing, and ended "unquestionably right". The plot was transparent with the title and there were no surprises. The story was linear with no surprises, no excitement, no real drama. The acting was what you would expect from a "family friendly" cable channel's "special presentation". And personally ... there were far too many "shoulder to shoulder, on the stairs, heart to heart" talks.

All in all I just have one description of the film to encompass everything from the writing down to final edit.

Lazy.

There is a base that swallows this garbage with a smile. It doesn't have to be good in any way. It just has to feed into their world view. They'll buy it, they'll watch it, and they'll make the rounds on Netflix, IMDb, Amazon, or anywhere else to give it maximum stars and glowing reviews. Not because it was any good, but because it justifies their ignorance and enforces their belief that they're persecuted when they hear bogus stories of prayer being banned in school.