that's the way it went today pt. deux

so...

i somewhat randomly decided to watch "oh, god!" today. it sounded good from the description--god, characteristically played by an old, endearing george burns, arbitrarily intervenes in the life of an ordinary man, an impossibly average assistant manager at a grocery store, played by the impossibly average, late, john denver--and it's a movie i'd always seen around (seems pretty ubiquitous), but never found much reason to watch. thanks to encore! on demand, though, and my inexplicable compulsion to see every movie ever made, despite any real inclination or interest, i had an excuse to sit down and witness what, let's face it, could have been an excellent lifetime film.

it's not the technical aspects, or visual elements, of the film that i found so off-putting, really. that's actually one thing i really liked. films from the nineteen-seventies, as a rule, always get a couple of freebie points from me if, for nothing else, for being so amazingly aesthetically-pleasing. something about the grainy celluloid and groovy sensibilities, which always seem to manifest themselves on film. i love it.

however, my big beef with the film was that i was aware, the whole time, that i was being preached at. "the plums can wait," burns says, in one not-so-thinly-veiled attempt at philosophical profundity, "it's not every day you get to talk to god." it's lines like these, even as a christian, which just scream dishonest christian propaganda. and there are plenty of these insights throughout. i actually had to turn the movie off halfway into it because i got a little queasy. i mean, i get it. a guy hears the voice of god and (i guess) it's lamentable that no one, in our supposedly decadent era, would possibly believe him. like, we're a godless society and anyone, according to the film, who dares exhibit their faith publicly risks being labeled insane. i get it. i really do. and i think that's--whatever. it's fine. but the film really draws away from its integrity by relentlessly pounding this somewhat conniving discourse into our heads every time a character opens his or her mouth.

sample dialogue:

john denver: "god spoke to me--that's the biggest story of the century!--and they won't publish it because they think i'm crazy. boy, what's wrong with the world?"

of course, i'm paraphrasing. but, you get the idea.

it just upsets me, immensely, when christians, who are apparently honest and humble (or should be), use cheap gimmickry like this to rope in converts. for one, it's dishonest. they're trying to make this movie relatable to those they see as worldly. so, they have george burns playing god. and, of course, there's some sexy "adult situations," but, overall, it's a pretty clean-cut experience. i can just imagine the type of guy who goes to the theater, rents the movie, expecting a george burns raunchfest with plenty of intellectual musing on religion and the nature of god and, upon putting the movie in, realizing, "shit...it's john denver."

i mean, you can't trick people into being christians. that's not how it works. it's something people have to decide on their own. and people aren't dumb. they know or they can figure out pretty easily when they're being preached at and it doesn't matter who you cast in your movie, or how it's marketed, people are going to figure out, sooner or later, that they're being baited--and in the worst way possible, by the very people from whom you'd least expect this kind of behavior. i mean, this is, sadly, not unlike some of the tactics used by cigarette companies to get kids hooked on tobacco. right? just like camel and everybody's favorite camel, camel joe, "oh, god!" is not all that it seems to be--it's strategic (and kinda sleazy) marketing. it's george burns saying, "hey, i buy the god thing. so you should, too. you know, god can be pretty hip, too. huh?"


i don't know.

maybe the film's heart is in the right place, but the execution, the way the film presents itself, just reeks of manipulative insincerity.