Plot Summary
Grandma Margie’s family is a wreck even though she is always praying for them and imparting her fundamentalist wisdom to them. She lets any and all of them come to live with her in her huge house–as long as they abide by her strict rules. She aims to fix them up from their problems before sending them back out into the evil world. With so many things going on in her house, she can hardly keep up, and neither can we.
Production Quality (2 points)
Surprisingly, this film, which by all outside factors seems like a small church film, has an above-average production quality. This is manifested in good video quality and good camera work, as well as professional audio quality, even if the soundtrack is very generic. There are some random dark scenes, however, and sets, props, and locations are fairly limited by the nature of the plot and the resources available. The editing can be oddly choppy at times despite the fact that there are useless filler scenes throughout. Some scenes seem cut short while others drag on too long. With the sheer amount of content shoved into this film, it’s no wonder things get confusing. However, on the whole, this production is better than expected.
Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)
Grandma’s House is a forum to push a very close-minded and fundamentalist worldview on the audience that has an offensive view of women and a slew of quick fixes for all of your neighborhood problems. While the movie takes an honest look at real family issues and other realistic problems, it refuses to probe the reasons behind the wrong actions and instead settles for cheap spiritualized platitudes and Bible-verse-bandaging. The story assumes that people just need to stop acting bad and start acting legalistic in order to be ‘fixed.’ Thus, each character is designed to represent an issue rather than a person, which makes them empty and simplistic. Dialogue is mostly expository and issue-pushing, and there is too much heavy-handed narration. In the end, everything is fixed without any good explanation or realistic understanding of how issues progress.
Acting Quality (1.5 points)
While most of the cast members in this film are average in their performances, Loretta Devine is particularly annoying, similar to her infamous Caged No More role. Other cast members are not the worst at acting, but they are not the best either. There are some attempts to coach them, but there are just too many extreme emotions, including yelling and screaming outburst. At times, line delivery comes off as too practiced, but there are enough good moments here to justify an average score.
Conclusion
Movies like this one know what they want to push on their audience or simply tell some specific audience what they want to hear. It’s fine to want to discuss important issues in the context of a film, but treating people like pawns or one-dimensional problems doesn’t do any service to your cause. Most people will see right through such attempts, which will only further contribute to the negative image of Christianity that films like Grandma’s House seek to reinforce for some reason.
Final Rating: 3.5 out of 10 points
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