When a troubled teen is forced to work at a homeless shelter to atone for his misgivings, he doesn’t care about the people at all at first. However, he slowly begins to change as he spends more time around the people at the shelter. Will he change before it’s too late?
Production Quality (.5 point)
This production is fairly low quality due to loud background sounds, echoes, and a generic soundtrack that drown out other audio. Light and camera work are inconsistent, and special effects are bad. Acceptable sets, locations, props, and video keep this section from receiving no points. However, editing is choppy, thus rounding out a poor effort.
Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)
One Life at a Time contains one of the stupidest ever portrayals of ‘bad kids,’ which are strawmen. It feels like the writers were very tone deaf and didn’t understand how the real world works, especially when it comes to unrealistic legal proceedings, perfect Christian characters, and young people using social media. In general, all the characters are empty due to mindless and robotic dialogue, and there’s no reason why some of them hate homeless people so much. After weird psychological sequences give way to very steep character arcs as people are fixed too easily. In the end, with no potential, this section receives no points.
Acting Quality (.5 point)
As a whole, the acting in this film lacks conviction. Many cast members don’t really seem to care about what they’re doing. Line delivery and emotions are bland and vanilla. Some scenes contain acting that it a bit too extreme. However, there is a tiny amount of improvement with time, which is enough to keep this aspect of the screenplay from being zero points.
Conclusion
Once again, the JC Films team has demonstrated that they care more about dumping more and more Christian movies onto the market than actually creating quality projects. These creators don’t care about heeding advice and will continue to do what they want at the expense of the reputation of Christian media.
When Amber’s husband is killed in an overseas bombing while on tour in the Middle East, her entire life seems to come apart piece by piece. She struggles to support her and her daughter in a small town because she obviously didn’t get any military benefits from the government. She also pushes everyone away and doesn’t go to church anymore, but thankfully, a semi-bad-boy race car driver has crashed in town because he needed some time off from doing whatever it was he was doing before. This gives him time to do stuff with all the kids in town, which is where he becomes obsessed with Amber’s daughter and eventually Amber herself. However, Amber still is struggling financially to the point where she needs an old-fashioned loan from the pawn shop. Will the madness ever end?
Production Quality (2 points)
As per usual for most recent Harold Cronk and PureFlix productions, God Bless the Broken Road has a fine, generic one to offer with nothing particularly special or negative about it. The sets, locations, and props are somewhat limited, but camera work, video quality, and audio quality are all fine. The vanilla soundtrack leaves something to be desired, and the editing is poor because of the nature of the story, but on the whole, this is a fine attempt. However, this brand of production is also becoming very common place in Christian entertainment, so it’s time for deep-pocketed outfits like PureFlix to show us a little something more.
Plot and Storyline Quality (-2 points)
Regardless, any good this film has to offer is totally negated by the total nonsense of this plot. At times, it feels copied from a Karen Kingsbury novel since this idea has been done so much before, but it’s actually worse because of the logical inconsistencies and flimsy premise. Too many unrealistic things happen that don’t appear to be rooted in reality, and this makes a mockery of real problems people may face in life. Most of the scenes are cheesily forced to convey a certain point in typical PureFlix Obvious style. An example of this is an old standby: awkward sermonizing of lessons they want the audience to be force-fed. Another instance is shown through the most generic dialogue and conversations that were surely purchased (or stolen) from Acme Stock Dialogue, Inc. The characters are just pawns in the inevitable progression of the plot as convenient turns happen to drive home certain agendas. Perhaps the worst part of it all is the fact that every horribly overused inspirational cliche is car-crashed into this one epic fail of a film…an exploration of how this is done would require a completely separate analysis. As a whole, God Bless the Broken Road is just another example of PureFlix Drama wherein every scene has to be an emotional climax as the characters are just extremely stereotyped caricatures designed to represent issues rather than people. If you’re looking for a corny Christian movie all-in-one deal, this one will be worth your money and time. Otherwise, avoid it like the plague.
Acting Quality (1 point)
While plastic white people take center stage to bore us with bland performances (in their defense, they weren’t given much to work with in the line department), better cast members are forced to take backseat as they watch the madness unfold before them and likely wonder when they’ll ever make a big enough break to no longer be trapped in PureFlix World. Main cast members come off as dead-faced and emotionally blank a lot of the time, which makes the forced emotional climaxes of the plot even worse. In the end, there’s some good here, but this sections rounds off an overall unacceptable effort in today’s Christian entertainment world.
Conclusion
If we wanted the sappiest, most unrealistic Hallmark film we could find, we would watch this film because it at least isn’t constantly interrupted by drug commercials. But who’s got that kind of time? Instead, let’s hope films like God Bless the Broken Road will become less and less commonplace as Christian audiences demand more quality from Christian entertainment creators. We’ve finally gotten to where above-average productions are commonplace, so it’s time to let the writers be the writers when it comes to screenplays.
Box Office Revolution 