Wednesday, February 22, 2017

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone

Went to see this at my wife's request Sunday afternoon.  I really enjoyed it.  It is part of an emerging group of Christian films that are at least on a par with the "mainstream" movie industry in production values and writing.  Without spoiling anything: Gavin Stone is an aging 1980s child TV star almost lost in his self-destructive substance abuse problems.  He returns to his home town in rural Illinois and causes enormous destruction to the roof of his hotel.  We never find out what he did, but we are given the fact that it involved a catapult to keep us intrigued.  The court sentences him to 200 hours of community service, with his choice of janitor at a church or working at the sewage treatment plant.  Easy choice.

The church, a fairly typical evangelical church, is putting on a stage production of Jesus' life for Easter.  Gavin of course eds up in the title role: not exactly what the court had in mind for community service.

It is of course a film about spiritual rebirth and his relationship to his father, a widower, and the pastor's daughter (an actress that I can't immediately recognize, but she looks familiar).

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