Proving the so-called spiritual genre still has an awfully long way to go before feeling half has meaningful as underlying content would suggest, this quest for meaning and purpose remains ironically dull for it's intended purpose. Rather then adapting Neale Donald Walsch's massively successful spiritual dialogs, the film version of Conversations with God plays more like a biography, detailing the catalyst behind this reluctant author's unique journey which saw him living on the streets to becoming an international bestseller.
In a film plagued with bad choices, choosing to go the docudrama route proves one of the only wise decisions, producing a few of the Lifetime-worthy affair's only authentic and moving sequences. It is a testament to the inept direction then, when any and all emotional sincerity takes place during the initial struggling and unanimously subsides when relaying the inspirational turn of events that will fail to inspire the viewer. Proving quite contradictory indeed, the more Conversations with God presses on the book's inspirational themes of love, surrender, and other random insights, the less impact any previously watched glimmer of truth seems to reap.
There is just a massive divide between parlaying this intensely personal information in a way that does not feel trite, even laughably condescending, to all but the most ardent of sheep-fans... Meaning, until dedicated efforts into this budding genre begin translating our inner spiritual discussions more believably by refining their techniques into many more subtle shades of consciousness, they will continue to bare the new-age brunt of jokes, contradict what they so earnestly try to capture, and give moviegoers every which reason to extract spiritual qualities from other genres that unconsciously produce this sentiment so much clearer, with a lot less strain. For the few heartfelt moments that detail Walsch's struggle with homelessness, the film rises above the emotional sterile, Hallmark-prone manipulation that the majority seems to be. However, anyone who is not already begging to enjoy this movie, having been a rabid fan of the author's work, has every right to leer in cynical jest at the film's unintentionally ironic tone of detached insincerity.
