1. I liked the book better. It was an interesting surprise to me to see Greg Kinnear play the dad - I had no idea he was in the movie since I hadn't seen any of the trailers prior to watching the movie. I think he did a good job but the "acting" of the other characters was a little lacking.
2. The movie gets a lot of criticism because people say it talks about a kid dying, going to heaven, and coming back to life which is not really "biblical". However, they say several times in the movie that the boy did not die - he was just very close to dying. Maybe God did give him a quick glance into heaven to come back & share his story. It got lots of people talking about God & their faith, right? What's the harm in that? He was only 4 years old and for a 4 year-old to speak of the things he saw - it's just unheard of. I'm not saying it happened, but I'm sure not saying it didn't. Having said that, I also don't think we should let popular movies and books shape our spiritual beliefs. As Christians, our beliefs in heaven and hell, the "afterlife", angels, etc. should be based solely on what the Bible says because Scripture is the only source of truth. Here is an interesting take by David Platt, a video my husband recently shared with me...
3. In the movie, the "bitter" woman asks the dad if he believes her already deceased son went to heaven or not. The dad just talks about how much God loves us and that is all well and good but even His great love for us will not get us to heaven. It is our choice whether we accept His love or not. And that's a totally personal relationship thing with Jesus. We can't see into anyone's heart - that's God's judgement call.
4. I wasn't going to mention this, but since it bothered me, I am. I think they "oversexualized" the wife and the relationship between the parents in the movie. Now I'm not against an "appropriate" amount of display of affection amongst a married couple but I think they went a tad bit overboard to the point where it made me a little uncomfortable watching a couple of the scenes with my 12 year-old. And to be honest, it just seemed fake and unnatural for the couple. And the wife was always wearing little short dresses with low necklines & tiny little nighties to bed. I just think it's sad that Hollywood thinks they have to throw that kind of stuff in to have a good storyline - even in a "Christian" movie.
5. I think we're missing the big picture of the point of this film. To me, it's not about whether a child actually got to go to heaven and retell what he saw after being given the chance to live again. It's not even about if there's really a heaven or a hell. (We already know there is because it's in the Bible. We don't need a movie to tell us that.) It's more about how are we living our lives intentionally on earth and are we loving "big"? Life is so short and we're not guaranteed another breath, so how will others remember us when we are gone? If we say we are "Believers", did our lives point people to Jesus or are we just one more reminder about how big of hypocrites "Christians" are?
6. The most positive thing to me about the movie is that it gets conversations going about people's faith. As Abby and I were driving home, we saw a beautiful sunset & had to pull over to take pics of it. I told her, "You know, Abby. This is a beautiful sunset isn't it? Just look at all the colors in the sky & the shape of the clouds. But can you even imagine what heaven will be like? It will be a gazillion times prettier than this sunset and life in heaven will be a gazillion times better than it could ever be on earth." A great ending to a pretty thought-provoking night.
Here's a few other resources to consider on this topic...
* "How Real is the Book 'Heaven is for Real'?" - audio by Pastor John Piper
* View from CP Entertainment
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