With so many of the user reviews gushing with praise, I thought I'd better add a quick negative review; because I found this movie laughable.
The religious message is over done and gets very cloying. The acting is mostly wooden (Charly character gets a pass, but Sam gets a colossal thumbs down). Some of the lines they've been given are excruciatingly lame. If your not a rather soppy, religious type of person I can't see you finding much to like, especially during the ending scenes.
To have a chance of enjoying this movie (and surprisingly for me, it seems many people did) I think you first really have to share much of the same parochial values and beliefs as the Sam character (and seemingly the values of the films backers) and then have them nicely confirmed for you over the course of the movie. Otherwise this film leaves you constantly perplexed with the absurdity that a few hours spent in the company of a boring nerdy boy-scout while having a quick prayer in the back yard and watching him fish will somehow change someone from a sassy, artsy, secular city-girl into a perfect little pious mid-western house wife.
The religious message is over done and gets very cloying. The acting is mostly wooden (Charly character gets a pass, but Sam gets a colossal thumbs down). Some of the lines they've been given are excruciatingly lame. If your not a rather soppy, religious type of person I can't see you finding much to like, especially during the ending scenes.
To have a chance of enjoying this movie (and surprisingly for me, it seems many people did) I think you first really have to share much of the same parochial values and beliefs as the Sam character (and seemingly the values of the films backers) and then have them nicely confirmed for you over the course of the movie. Otherwise this film leaves you constantly perplexed with the absurdity that a few hours spent in the company of a boring nerdy boy-scout while having a quick prayer in the back yard and watching him fish will somehow change someone from a sassy, artsy, secular city-girl into a perfect little pious mid-western house wife.