Directed By Andrew and Jon Erwin

Starring – Britt Robertson, K.J Apa, Melissa Roxburgh

The Plot – The true-life story of Christian music star Jeremy Camp (Apa) and his journey of love and loss that looks to prove there is always hope.

Rated PG for thematic material

POSITIVES

– Talented cast. For religious films, terrible acting is usually a staple in the list of growing cliches that have come to mostly define the genre, but here we are treated to a strong helping of depth in its ensemble of both young and old that illustrates energy from every one on board. Robertson and Apa’s chemistry is there, even if the cheesy dialogue and sometimes questionable story framing do them no favors in making this feel like a healthy love story. For Robertson, it’s easily her best work to date, embodying Melissa as this woman full of faith and ambition that challenges the actress in ways no other role has for her to date. We finally get to see Britt lay on the dramatic range that makes her unforgettable to the complexion of the story, and when combined with the charms of Apa’s misunderstood loverboy with a guitar, does make for an indulging companionship between them that tugs at all hearts in the audience. It was also great to see Gary Sinise again, as Jeremy’s pastor father, who guides him on life’s biggest challenges. Sinise was easily one of Hollywood’s most infamous villains during the 90’s, so it’s nice to see a reminder once in a while of the gentle warmth that he exudes over a movie that doesn’t fully require him to be the central focus.

– Tasteful soundtrack. One thing that surprised me about this aspect in particular of the film’s production is the wide offering of eclectic musical genres that are prominently displayed throughout the picture. In addition to Camp’s popular catalog, as well as the surrounding artists of the faith musical genre whose songs pop into frame from time to time, the soundtrack also features a surprising amount of mainstream alternative rock favorites that proves some money was spent appealing to a much bigger audience. Some of the ones I caught were “Run” by Collective Soul, “Can’t Help Falling In love With You” by Elvis Presley, and my personal favorite; “Sweet Disposition” from The Temper Trap, for those of us still pining over “500 Days of Summer”. It’s a well rounded collection that doesn’t settle for the expected, and brought forth a few Camp songs in particular that I surprisingly am listening to as I type out this review.

– Dramatic heft. Let’s face it, without the string of scenes meant to twist and turn your emotional pallet, a film like “I Still Believe” will feel uninspiring, and leave you vapid of the experience that you are expecting with star-crossed lovers dodging all of life’s biggest curves, but thankfully the film’s second half involves two meaningful twists that keeps the story fresh while further developing the love between Jeremy and Melissa. If you don’t know the real life story, I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that it allowed the film to travel the dark avenues of storytelling not often seen in religious genre films, and outlined a second half of this film that was ten times more compelling than anything in the first half. If you’re easy on the tears, I recommend bringing a tissue for this movie, as the sound of sniffles and heavy breaths weighed heavily on my particular audience, which felt glued to the screen the higher the stakes grew with time.

– Refreshing approach. Musical biopics are a subgenre by themselves in 2020, so what does a movie like this do to stand out from its predecessors and not feel reliant on the tropes that fill in the blanks of its screenplay? Well, for one it’s less riveted by the music business side of Jeremy’s perils, and instead focused almost entirely on the woman that changed his life forever. What’s unique about this is it takes a figure as big and global as Camp, and condenses it to the bond between these two people, which allows the story to strip down everything else that is superficial in Jeremy’s life, and donate its minutes to the building bricks that launched such an inspirational career. It’s similar to “Walk the Line”, in that Johnny’s tour and surrounding life hung in the balance for his relationship with June, and during a time when he damn near killed himself, it was her loving arms that allowed the jaded singer to find solace in himself to confront a past that outlined the man he saw and hated in the mirror everyday.

– 90’s time frame. This is something that not a lot of people will notice, but one I took great exception in for how the film doesn’t use its setting as a distraction of a gimmick that pays off in nostalgic familiarity. What that means is that although this story takes place in 1999, at the height of the technological dawn of the internet, as well as a time when sequence shirts and khaki pants took over the fashion trends, this movie instead cements its visual placement naturally in the form of background objects that you could blink and miss. One obvious one is the Sony walkman that two brothers duel over at the very beginning of the film, but the others reside more in the two automobiles that are prominently present in the film, as well as certain instrument pedals that wouldn’t be used as dependent as they are in this film, due to advancements in musicianship. Only a musician would understand that last one, and it speaks volumes to the kind of eye for production value that the film has, especially considering it doesn’t settle for a gimmick in background style that feels like the low-hanging fruit that nearly every movie with a decade tag has to reach for by today’s film standards.

– Not offensive. This may be the biggest positive when it comes to “I Still Believe”, because unlike religious propaganda films like the God’s Not Dead franchise, or “Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas”, it doesn’t require a desperate plea to the audience to fill its congregation to solidify its religious intent, and in that earns an undying respect from me that was the turning point for giving this film a passing grade. There are times when the religion is weighed on slightly too thick for what is required for the scene or the performance of Apa in particular, but I can say that every mention throughout the film feels justified with what the movie did with it, and in turn made this one of the easier sits for an atheist like me, who doesn’t go to religious movies to be ridiculed like those I mentioned previously, who do it unabashedly.

NEGATIVES

– Distracting dialogue. It seems like every time I grew invested in the blossoming love between Jeremy and Melissa, or any time this film tried to develop an air of characterization, the movie bumbled its execution with lines of dialogue so cringeworthy cheesy that I couldn’t help but groan each time one popped up. There are many to dissect here, but all of my focus is going to one line so bad that the screenwriter should’ve been slapped for even thinking that it was clever or cute to anyone with a pulse. It takes place after a near tragic event between the protagonists, with Jeremy setting up artificial stars to comfort Melissa. After showing her the glowing room, he tells her “Anyone could give their love stars, but I wanted to give you the galaxy”. He then hands her a Milky Way candy bar. I shit you not. There are lines that are equally as puzzling as to why any conscience person would explain things a certain way, but none as mind-numbingly vapid as this one, and it soils these moments of sanctimony that the film requires to better sell its drama.

– Rushed storytelling. This is where my problems with the first half of the story begin, and only get worse from here. During moments when the storytelling requires stability and focus on developing the romance between them, the film montages their biggest moments on two different occasions, and instead gives us moments during the early stages of their relationship that could easily be depicted in a wrong light because of the way it comes across with creepy or even stalker vibes. Where this eventually sets in is later on when the dramatic heft takes place, and you find that while satisfying for a dramatic aspect, doesn’t exactly satisfy in the way I invested into the well-being of its characters. It gets frustrating with how it doesn’t see importance to the building blocks of its relationship, and speeds the pacing of its relationship along in a way that seems too fast for what materializes in their relationship.

– Poor sound mixing. These are during the concert scenes, where nothing about their presentation feels believable in a way that immerses us into the element of a building with this many people inside of it. For one, the audio is a bit too perfect, never echoing or giving feedback in a way that has become synonymous with that concert experience. In addition to this, it’s clearly obvious that every fan in the audience has been muted to accommodate the performance that is front and center, and while this won’t bother everyone who comes to see the movie, it does me because it glosses up what should be a naturalistic element of the environment it is so candidly depicting. This is where I will give “Bohemian Rhapsody” the credit I rarely give it, because it incorporated the roar of the audience to really grant us the polarizing excess of Queen’s popularity, and proved that any element that comes across the microphone during concert scenes can help articulate what about the environment makes it unique from everything else in the film that surrounds it.

– Prosthetics choices. (LIGHT SPOILERS HERE) Your production exudes laziness when it can’t even capitalize on something as simple as an actor shaving their head for a purpose within the film. Instead of showing the actor with their head shaved, or even showing them shaving their head in the first place, it puts a cap over them for the next few scenes, which would be alright if the continuity and focus didn’t emit a glaring problem. This problem is the actor’s real hair, which pops out of the cap in two different places, and suspends belief in the gimmick in a way that is unnecessary when you consider that attention could’ve easily rid the scene of these problems. What proves this point even more is a couple of scenes later, where the actor sports a shorter haircut, which looks and measures up to the size of the cap that the character was donning previously. It’s sloppy execution for something so simple to convey.

My Grade: 6/10 or C