Not every story is worth adapting for film. Judging this as what it is, a movie, there's nothing special. I can't point to even one unique thing in this movie, the whole thing feels very uninspired. To enjoy this movie I would have to be at a point in my life where I had seen very few movies. That is something which I consider to be problem.
The writing is by far the weakest point. My research tells me that this story was not bound by the truth, but rather that the facts were cast aside for the sake of meaningless, manufactured drama. Even if everything in this movie did actually happen as told, which it did not, then it was a bad idea to make this story a film for others to experience. Too many clichés happen in this movie to list them all, an absolute annihilation of lazy storytelling. Let's say, purely for the sake of argument, that this movie did actually happen as told, in that case it was a bad idea to translate this story to the big screen. The reason being that it comes across as bad storytelling, which makes it unfit for adaptation. Either way, it just doesn't work.
The performances are absolutely fine, never good enough to make me care about the characters. Although in fairness I would attribute that more to the writing then the actors, who did just fine for what they were given. Nobody stands out as good, or even bad for that matter.
The cinematography and directing in this movie is so unbelievably, perfectly average. While nothing stands out as good or inspired, nothing ever stands out as bad, thus helping the movie to feel extremely uninspired. While the cinematography and directing in this movie were serviceable, the lack of originality ultimately helped to make the movie feel even more bland.
There were frequent attempts at humor in this movie, which failed as often as they arose. Their attempts feel very worn out, and extremely childish. It was such an embarrassing attempt, as though no thought or effort was put into it.
In this movie they build so much hype surrounding this one song, that by the time I finally heard it, I felt disappointed. The song was perfectly fine, it wasn't bad, it wasn't great, it was perfectly fine. If you have already heard the song before then this probably will not be so glaring to you. I can't hold this against the film though, considering precisely how subjective music is, I won't dock the movie points for that.
On top of all I just mentioned, this movie bored me. It even bored me so much that it put me to sleep for five to ten minutes. Now I wouldn't have fallen asleep had it not been late at night, but a good movie would have kept me awake. I've been there, it's late at night and I'm getting tired, but the movie or show that I'm watching is so good that it keeps me awake, because I'm so invested in it. This didn't even come close to doing that, it put me right to sleep. I've literally never fallen asleep in a theatre before, until this one. I actually believe I would have had a better experience had I been asleep for the whole movie, but unfortunately I saw over 90% of it.
To anybody that says this movie was made for Christians, and should not be judged by anyone else, I strongly disagree. If you need to belong to a certain group of people to enjoy a movie, then that movie has failed. Movies should be transcendent, and being nonreligious as I am, this movie wasn't. Even taken out of its religious context, it fails just as a film. While this movie never actually annoyed me, I have to call it on its faults. This movie fails to bring anything good to the table, while reusing overused clichés and story elements to a point of unshocking blandness. If you haven't seen any movies before, maybe the problems won't stand out to you, maybe it'll even come across as original. But if you have ever seen a film in your lifetime, this comes across utterly meaningless. Don't waste two hours of your life that you'll end up quickly forgetting about, your time means more than this.
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