God’s Not Dead has gone from bad to worse. It was a commercial success but got criticized for its its screenplay, Cronk's directing, performances, mean-spirited tone, characters, and use of straw man arguments and common stereotypes of atheists, instead of any actual debate. All fair criticisms but I just rewatched it with my daughter today and I found it to be much worse than my initial impression 10 years ago.

I am coming at this from a Christian perspective and was bothered this time around by things that flew past me at the theater. I am not sure that the poor caricature of the Muslim father bothered me back then. I couldn’t help but think how offensive it must be for Muslim’s to have themselves portrayed as bigots and abusive towards their children. Also it is an insult to portray a Muslim converting to Christianity. Imagine if a Roman Catholic family had a child convert to Islam in a movie what that would be viewed like.

In the initial viewing I think I suspended disbelief and ignored a major plot hole. Professor discriminating based on religion? Check. Professor banging a student and living together, then having faculty over? Check. Non-starter? Check.

The pastor in the movie is horrible. He doesn’t give 2 fvcks about anyone in the show. He seems bothered to have to entertain a visiting missionary. He leaves a college student going through a major ordeal with a couple of Biblical references and walks off. The Muslim girl is alone in his office 10 ft from he and the missionary. They have a conversation about her in front of her and discuss her while right outside the door to his office looking at her alone in a chair. It came across as apathetic. He calls a car rental guy liar to his face and reminds him that he is lying to a pastor. Then to top it all off they just pray for his personal car to start and bam it’s up and running again. Not very realistic and weakens the overall credibility of the movie.

But the ending flew all over me this go round. The prof gets fatally struck in a ‘hit and run accident.’ The pastor asks him to accept Jesus right before he dies. He then tells him that he is about to know more about God than any of us. This came across as it sucks being you! They are then standing over the dead prof when his blackberry receives the text from his ex-girlfriend “God’s Not Dead.” They look at the text and seem pleased.

The show ends with the prof dying in the street, while everyone is at the concert celebrating the fact that the kid stood up to the bad ole professor. His ex-friend is having the time of her life as is everyone else. Meanwhile the professor meets a tragic end. Oh well.

I found the ending very insulting. It was the moral equivalent of when a kid loses a parent and someone says to them at the funeral, “they’re in a better place now” or someone loses a child and someone explains “God needed them more” or “there’s another angel in heaven now.” All well intentioned but very dumb things to say to people in grief. No one shed a tear for the professor.