Unexpected Places

Real life in today's confusing fun house of mirrors. Reality is distorted and finally becomes clear as to the path one must take. A Great watch.A family gets torn apart and miles of road lies between the parents and the children. Strife of a single mother battling her ex, the children and a strenuous job takes the toll and everything seems to crumble. The son becomes the focus in this drama as he is charming and very believable but takes advantage of everyone's hearts as he tries to stifle his pain with drugs and alcohol all the while, appearing to be content with his choices. When his path hits a dead end, his salvation comes in a strange twist of fate and he is delivered by unconventional means. Paddy

As a non-believer as opposed to an anti-believer and there is a huge difference I've reviewed any number of Christian based films and I've judged them accordingly. Some are better than others overall, some are more subtle than others and some are just downright bad. But when I saw that a Christian movie reviewer trashed Unexpected Places my expectations were low and I wasn't disappointed.

Penny Carlisi both wrote and played the lead. She's a Christian mom who married a Christian guy who probably didn't want to married to the church lady and they split because he cheated on her. He also wanted to split the custody of their two boys, but she made sure that didn't happen.

Now she has a second husband and they're happy and the boys are now played by Chad Gibbons and Tim Turok. Gibbons is living without benefit of clergy with Robin McCoy and they have a kid. Turok is a total screw up who is continually in trouble with the law. She's also got problems at work.

Nevertheless her main occupation is that prayer group from church which consists of a bunch of other church wives who tell each other their troubles and then commune with the Lord. Of course it all works out in a roundabout way as per these films.

The acting and the directing were atrocious. I've seen better in college plays, even at the high school level. Nobody gives any kind of believable performance.

When a Christian reviewer trashes it you know it's bad.

I really liked the story. I identified with the mother/career woman living a dual life, trying to hide her problems from her church family/prayer group. She was actually living two lives and hiding from her husband things she should have shared. I loved her prayer group, and I saw that it was the actual prayer group that prayed for the movie and for the gospel story to be seen. Both sons were troubled. I could really see the mother just being her real self while in the prayer group. The message intended was clear: Never give up on anyone. Everybody benefitted by continually asking for help from God. I loved the closing song about surrendering everything to God when a person's heart is turned by God's grace to repentance. THAT'S the moment I related even more to this movie. Keep up the great work!

Its a movie that a recovery or church group would watch to open a discussion about dealing with troubled love ones. The storyline is well written.

I really liked this film which portrays the difficulties in life which all of us have, do we believe God or not? You have for example the Do-Gooder in Church who wants to control her world, by the face she lives by. She demonstrates perfection, she goes to Church so that she can be perceived as good, as perfect, but ultimately she cannot control the world, though she makes a big effort to. Unfortunately that world comes crashing down around her, and when she gives me and admits she can't, then she leaves God to do it - her son accepts Christ in Jail from his own conscious decision, and a miracle happens, the prodigal son who was dead, is alive again!