A Guilty Pleasure

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2015)

Others have recounted well enough the story line here so I won't bored you with that. In broad strokes, with a lot of talented and well- known actors newcomer Jakob Salvati steals the show and carries the film. That's taking nothing away from the other performances of which Tom Wilkinson's nicely underplayed priest and mom played by Emma Watson. Lot of small roles by well know actors, (Ted Levine a personal favorite and with a nice performance here.) Not at all preachy or tied up with a neat little resolution at the end as many of these faith-based movies can be. It's also not a fantasy which is what I thought from the trailers: the value of faith as process or journey verse believing and seeing miracle outcomes. Can be a bit overly sentimental at times but not out of line for the gravity of its subject. I enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a couple good cries. It's hard to be lured away from where a movie like this usually goes but it was able to do so with me. I couldn't project the end and having seen as many movies as I have that's not easy to do. It's a good movie for the whole family though perhaps not for the very young.