Plot Summary
Jason Stevens has inherited his grandfather’s massive fortune, but he has lost his way in life. He is successful at putting the money to good use helping others, but he seems to never have any time for his longtime girlfriend Alexia, who he does not realize has plans of her own. On top of this, Jason’s family is suing him for the family fortune. When he wakes up one day and suddenly finds Alexia has left the country, he doesn’t know what to do. Therefore, he goes to his old friend Hamilton, who produces the diary of Jason’s grandfather so Jason can learn from his grandfather’s mistakes before he repeats them.
Production Quality (.5 point)
The video quality is clear, but unfortunately, that’s all that can be said for the production of The Ultimate Life. The sound quality varies depending on the type of scene. The camera work is also very random—sometimes good and sometimes shaky. The sets and locations are pretty good and fairly historically accurate, but some of them are unprofessionally presented. Perhaps the worst part is the editing. It is already difficult enough to transpose a past plotline onto a present day plotline, but The Ultimate Life comes off as very choppy and hard to follow. The scenes are all over the place, sometimes depicting a vague World War II battle and sometimes depicting an awkward 1940s high school (the actors seem too old for high school though) dance. The bottom line is that where the resources were available to make this a successful movie, they were not utilized.
Plot and Storyline Quality (.5 point)
This plot is meant to be another book adaptation, but it is nothing like the book that bears the same name. However, there wasn’t really much to work with in the book anyway. In this film, the life of Red Stevens is displayed at breakneck speed, thus not allowing any time for character development. While this could have been a very interesting tale of success, decline, and corruption, the story sputters along like an old car. It seems like multiple different movie ideas were spliced together into one, since the story hops along through time, only hitting the highlights and those moments that can be easily connected to the first installment in the series. The dialogue is mindless, and thus, the characters are empty. The only good thing to highlight here is that this plot had potential—the story of Red Stevens is not necessarily a happy one, but it could have been used as an example of how to handle success and how to put family first. But beyond this, there is nothing to say except that it seems like, rather than actually craft a meaningful plot to showcase an interesting topic, the crew thought up a whole bunch of tongue in cheek references to the more successful Ultimate Gift and transposed it on a post-Depression era backdrop.
Acting Quality (.5 point)
The actors and actresses are given no help. Therefore, the line delivery is very forced and no emotional expression is authentic. It seems like this cast could have been better than they are in this film, but nothing materializes. As a side note, it is difficult to cast multiple actors for one character across a timespan, but The Ultimate Life handles this pretty well. But unfortunately, that is the only good thing to mention.
Conclusion
The Ultimate Gift was a great film, and it is understandable why a prequel was requested. There was a lot of good content that could have been covered. Red Stevens’ character arc could have been showcased. The Ultimate Life could have been a great film, but ‘could have’ is not a winning phrase. After the success of Gift, Life had no excuses to be so poor, but it did. This is unfortunate, and The Ultimate Life joins a long line of Christian films that could have been.
Final Rating: 1.5 out of 10 points
Box Office Revolution 