It's an OK movie - not great, but OK. It's basically a version of It's a Wonderful Life, just from the other perspective. You get the same kinds of themes and all, but this time George (Ben Walker, actually) gets to leave and then sees not how rotten it would be if he hadn't lived, but how much happier he'd have been had he stayed behind.
The hero of What If... can't, however, be the owner/manager of a savings & loan back at home. If he'd had the wonderful life instead of the life he actually chose, he'd be a preacher. Capra's masterpiece showed a deeply spiritual, loving, Christian way of doing business (particularly as set in opposition to the evil banker, Mr. Potter). Here we get the contrast between the preacher who is doing things just for the Lord, and the businessman doing things for the money. The morality play is absolutely clear cut, and in case you don't quite get it, there are sermons and prayers - some by cute little kids - to make sure you get the message.
It also has its own Christian form of political correctness. They do have the hero (in his "what if" life) graduate from Moody Bible Institute (Baptist/revivalist, though not officially affiliated with any one denomination), but the church he serves is just "Little White Church" - no denomination, no history, no tradition, no nothing. Just the "Little White Church." This also makes it difficult to suspend disbelief and enter into the story as if these are real people whose struggles unfold before us.
And so the movie comes up short.
I find that in quite a bit of art - images, movies, music, books - produced by evangelicals. We can't quite trust the art. We seem afraid of not having it all nailed down so people can't misinterpret it. Instead of telling the story, we preach. Instead of singing the song, we preach. Instead of painting the picture, we preach. Instead of varied forms of art, we have sermon illustrations and most of them are pretty generic so as to be readily adaptable to whatever text you happen to be using this week.
I wonder if this is not some sad legacy of the Protestant Reformation - the iconoclastic riots that destroyed statuary and stained glass and other "images" that tempted to idolatry. Are we still carrying that burden and that's why we have to surround our artistry with sermons lest we be tempted once again? I don't know, but it does seem that Catholic artists don't have the same problem, or at least not as severely.
Don't get me wrong. Preaching is a form of art, too. There is certainly a place for the sermon and the sermon illustration. But a movie or a novel or a song or a picture can be just as God-glorifying without the sermon - and likely more so since it will be better art.
Good art, like a good joke, is diminished if you have to explain it and if I could give any advice to young artists, it would be to let the art speak for itself. What If... can't quite bring itself to do that.
The hero of What If... can't, however, be the owner/manager of a savings & loan back at home. If he'd had the wonderful life instead of the life he actually chose, he'd be a preacher. Capra's masterpiece showed a deeply spiritual, loving, Christian way of doing business (particularly as set in opposition to the evil banker, Mr. Potter). Here we get the contrast between the preacher who is doing things just for the Lord, and the businessman doing things for the money. The morality play is absolutely clear cut, and in case you don't quite get it, there are sermons and prayers - some by cute little kids - to make sure you get the message.
It also has its own Christian form of political correctness. They do have the hero (in his "what if" life) graduate from Moody Bible Institute (Baptist/revivalist, though not officially affiliated with any one denomination), but the church he serves is just "Little White Church" - no denomination, no history, no tradition, no nothing. Just the "Little White Church." This also makes it difficult to suspend disbelief and enter into the story as if these are real people whose struggles unfold before us.
And so the movie comes up short.
I find that in quite a bit of art - images, movies, music, books - produced by evangelicals. We can't quite trust the art. We seem afraid of not having it all nailed down so people can't misinterpret it. Instead of telling the story, we preach. Instead of singing the song, we preach. Instead of painting the picture, we preach. Instead of varied forms of art, we have sermon illustrations and most of them are pretty generic so as to be readily adaptable to whatever text you happen to be using this week.
I wonder if this is not some sad legacy of the Protestant Reformation - the iconoclastic riots that destroyed statuary and stained glass and other "images" that tempted to idolatry. Are we still carrying that burden and that's why we have to surround our artistry with sermons lest we be tempted once again? I don't know, but it does seem that Catholic artists don't have the same problem, or at least not as severely.
Don't get me wrong. Preaching is a form of art, too. There is certainly a place for the sermon and the sermon illustration. But a movie or a novel or a song or a picture can be just as God-glorifying without the sermon - and likely more so since it will be better art.
Good art, like a good joke, is diminished if you have to explain it and if I could give any advice to young artists, it would be to let the art speak for itself. What If... can't quite bring itself to do that.