Golden Mind

... you make a movie that:

• has awful cinematography (like I could have literally made a movie just like this one using my mobile phone. That's how bad it was)
• has awful soundtrack, most of which were christian songs with voices or playbacks;
• has an awful script that sometimes skips hugely important parts and never makes you feel the fulfilment the main character had;
• has awful dialogue, and I mean like horrible... the most cliche dialogue you would imagine wouldn't compare with this one;
• can't even make you believe for one second that the world that it presents is in any way real or feels real;
• has problems emphasising the importance of the story, nor develops the characters or gives them any depth whatsoever...

I could go on like this but to make it short and clear... I think this is an atrocious bad movie that unfortunately falls into the category of "small budget propaganda" christian type movies. There are more inspirational videos on youtube that will make your time worth. I am a christian and I believe in God, but I can't enjoy a movie that lacks everything that makes it a movie in the first place, and that's: Good story, good screenplay, good acting, good music and good enough cinematography. This movie only had a somewhat good story or better said good-intended story because the actual result was a total mess.

I don't even know if this movie got any cinema release or if it was made only for DVD release and sold to christian TV channels. There are many christian thematical movies out there that are way better than this. And there are movies with huge budgets and work poured into them that have even lower rating than this movie. That's why I'm giving it a 3/10. It's not total garbage but it's close. It's so sad to see such an interesting concept of a story wasted in such a bad movie. It's just very very sad...

God really touched my heart with this movie. Thank you God for finding a way for this movie to be made!

First off, I'm a Christian, and I enjoy some Christian movies, so you can consider me unbiased. The gospel was certainly not shared in this film, and if it was, it was so forced.

Mostly the gospel was shared as "go to Church" and you'll meet a hot girl and hold hands with her. The boy who is poor, whose sister is "coughing blood" and needs medicine from the grocery store (that's definitely where you'd buy medicine for that), skips work to go pray at Church with the rich girl.

I guess the praying worked though, so who am I to judge. Because suddenly the poor boy gets rich and he gets the girl. The prosperity gospel in a nutshell, which is definitely Biblical.

The writing for this film was SO BAD. So bad. The dialogue had me laughing when I was definitely not supposed to, and if I wasn't laughing I was cringing. I couldn't watch the whole thing straight through, it was too painful.

The acting was terrible. Seth (when he wasn't being the perfect human being) was so melodramatic. Sighing, slightly pouting instead of his regular deadpan look. I'm sure he sighed five hundred times in the film for no reason, and when he should have sighed he didn't. No one ever acted naturally.

The soundtrack was terrible, and half the time it made no sense to the plot.

Also, the Golden Nugget restaurant? I get that the name is supposed to be symbolic, but it just sounded funny to me.

The only good part in the film was the nature settings, which get 10/10 because God made them. And the wind that was blowing, because sometimes it was loud enough to drown out the dialogue and I really appreciated that. Combine these two and the film gets one star instead of zero.

Although the film comes out as a large commercial for the selling and trading of precious metals to make your fame and fortune, Golden Mind still has enough of a Christian story in it for church audiences and only for church audiences.

I have to say that at certain points of the film I was moved, but when I finished it and looked back on what I saw I realize my emotions were being manipulated. Josiah David Warren was just too much of a goody goody and I fear would not in real life be the success he made himself into.

For one thing child welfare surely would have stepped in with no father and a minor child in the picture even with Warren 18 he was still going to high school. To emphasize how poor he was the first part of the film he went totally without shoes, just wearing sandals without socks to school. Glad he got some footwear when he made a few dollars. Didn't improve the rest of his wardrobe.

Be frugal, invest in precious metals and become a born again Christian are the secrets of success. Were it only that simple.

Golden Mind tries to be a 21st century Horatio Alger story, but Alger's heroes may have struck gold, but never invested that way.

Although this is an early movie by Strong Foundation films, and not up to the standard of more recent efforts (notably the truly excellent Day You Found Me), there is still much to engage and affect a receptive viewer here.

We know we can expect a happy ending, and it does come eventually, but the journey of the main characters delivers a roller coaster of emotions along the way. The story unfolds at a pace that allows more development than is usual in this genre.

I don't know why these films come in for such criticism. They're never going to match Hollywood for production value, but they're big-hearted, God-honouring and very moving.