God’s Not Dead 4… they are still making them and I’m still watching them. I am not the target market for these films but I always try to give them a chance. Are they full of persecution complexes and strawmen arguments? Yes, but you pays yer dues, you takes yer chances. You shouldn’t go see a 50 Shades movie and get indignant at all the sex or watch a Star Wars movie and wish there weren’t so many robots and spaceships.
This God’s Not Dead film is about a home school co-op that is identified by the State (insert horror theme here) as not teaching to the educational standards. The parents must face the music or send the kids to public school. So the parents (and pastor David AR White from the previous films) go to Washington DC to fight the power.
I legitimately liked God’s Not Dead 3 because it had finally grown up and presented a nuanced examination of its topic. Sure, it was still propaganda, but it didn’t villainize one side without pointing fingers at its own. Well, toss that aside… I guess the target audience didn’t appreciate the honest reflection. We’re back to straw-men arguments and Snidely Whiplash villains.
To be nice, this is the best produced film in this series. It looks good and is mostly shot and edited well. It introduces a cute boy-meets-girl subplot and even brings back the villainized Muslim character from the first movie and gives him a bit of a redemption.
The film is partially shot in Washington DC and has some nice scenes honoring the country and the monuments. Even though I knew the movie would never (*gasp* *clutches pearls*) acknowledge any wrongs the country had done, it was still a well-produced, heart-warming advertisement for the Washington DC board of tourism.
No, the problem with the movie isn’t that it’s hateful, disrespectful, and obvious (which it is)… it’s that it ultimately turns the cornball schmaltz to such a high level, it made me laugh in derision. It was bad enough trying to give a pass to the obvious Villains saying the quiet parts out loud, but it makes an effort to go full Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and fails so utterly, so contemptibly, the whole movie collapses under the weight of the awful one-sided arguments and the swelling music.
No, this otherwise well-produced movie is somehow the low point of the series. A series that I thought had taken an honest look at itself and its own fans in the previous film and then chucked that aside to wrap itself in the American flag and declare self-persecution. If only they had lions and an arena.
Score: 68