Letters To God (2010/Vivendi DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Feature: D

 

 

The condescending, would be “family” cycle of supposedly religious programming that keeps getting produced continues with one of the worst yet, Patrick Doughtie & David Nixon’s shallow, obnoxious, phony and pathetic Letters To God (2010) is the illicit-appeal-to-pity tale of an 8-year-old boy who has cancer who writes to ‘God’ on a daily basis (he sends them, as his God does not have an e-mail address apparently) and is supposedly “based on a true story” which in and out of religious productions is one of the worst things any production can claim.

 

In this case, it just goes on and on and on and on and on being predictable, tired, lame and even offensive.  Ralph Waite of The Waltons also shows up to legitimize the whole mess, putting all viewers in a different kind of great depression.  The dialogue is childish, this almost trivializes having cancer and when the 110 minutes of religious torture porn was over, I realized I had not seen so many character in their own fantasy world as they are here in a long time.

 

Nixon also co-produced the atrocious Fireproof with the idiotic Kirk Cameron, so the only thing this film does not suffer is acting that bad, but it amazingly comes very close.  If you have any respect for yourself, mark this one “return to sender” and consider that a real blessing!

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was shot in high definition video and look weak often, including poor color reproduction and motion blur throughout, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 is trying to stretch out adequate-at-best location recording thinly throughout those channels to limited avail.  Extras include a trailer (as if this really played anywhere), a lame behind-the-scenes featurette and inept feature length audio commentary by the co-directors that make them sound as clueless as the whole thing plays.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo