I have a lot of ambivalence about Letters to God.  On the one hand, it’s an on-the-mark portrayal of the way that prayer works in real life—not as self-absorbed wish fulfillment, but as the tonic which helps you get from one day to the next regardless of how bleak the outlook may be.  On the other hand, the film hews so closely to the expectations of its target audience that it never transcends a predictable after-school-special feel.  So I’d like to recommend the film, but I’m afraid I can’t.

Letters to God does, nonetheless, have a lot a going for it.  It lovingly tells the story of the real-life Tyler Doughtie (renamed here Doherty) who bounces back from brain-tumor surgery for a time and inspires friends and family with his titular prayer-letters to God; it thankfully doesn’t drag us through tragedy-of-the-week territory, instead jumping right into Tyler’s attempts to reintroduce himself to life; it features a strong and appealing central performance from Robyn Lively as Tyler’s mom, Maddy; and nowhere do you feel like the producers are trying to sneak by with second-best.  Most significantly, Letters doesn’t ditch the hard realities that screenwriter Patrick Doughtie, Tyler’s father, packed into the story.

Given my ambivalence about the film, though, a decent point of comparison for audiences might be the recent dying-child film Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser.  For all its deep pockets and megawatt star power, Measures somehow managed to miss the core of its story and fall flat by getting lost in subplots and characters who were not central to the film’s heart.  So while Letters, by way of comparison, will never achieve genre-classic status as did Death Be Not Proud, the filmmakers should be very satisfied that they managed to outdo their big-studio counterparts.  Measures may be more “entertaining” than Letters, but it just feels hollow alongside it.

Even for its target audience, though—those likely to jump on board with grass-roots indie Christian-film campaigns out of sheer frustration with offerings from the major distributors—Letters might feel a little too much like a fantasy.  The Doherty home and the goings-on there are just a little too tidy and bright; Patrick’s friend Samantha and her grandfather (Bailee Madison and Ralph Waite) are just a little too precious; and postman Brady’s apartment simply doesn’t feel lived in.  The sets and staging feel as if the filmmakers themselves live on film sets rather than in the real world, and can no longer tell the difference.

By comparison, I screened To Save A Life about the same time as both Letters to God and Extraordinary Measures.  The advance screener of Life was so troublesome that I had to restart the film seven times in order to complete it—and was happy to because the world portrayed was compellingly realistic—not gratuitously “frank,” as Booth Tarkington may have complained a century ago, but honest and genuine and perfectly in tune with the thrust of the story. 

As I remarked at the time, if I’d had the same problems screening Measures, I doubt I would have bothered to finish.  Letters to God?  Probably.  But it’s a tough call.

So if these are films with which you are familiar, my comments may help you determine if Letters will be your cup of tea.

If not, I certainly wouldn’t warn you away from Letters.  It’s well-made, it offers sound reflections on the nature of God and the nature of man, and I’m always in favor of anything that makes us think more deeply about our faith—and about prayer in particular.

Letters to God is rated PG for “thematic material.” Not much to comment on from this standpoint.  Death can be a touchy subject.

Courtesy of a national publicist, Greg screened a promotional copy of the film’s DVD release.  The special features are unremarkable.