Conversations with God

For the millions of readers of Neale Donald Walsch's superb trilogy, "Conversations with God" and his sequel, "Tomorrow's God," this film might have special meaning.

It chronicles in dramatic form, highlights from Author Walsch's rise from a struggling wannabe to a best-selling writer.

I've no idea how much of this is fact and how much dramatic license that Scriptor Eric DelaBarre took in fashioning his screenplay. However, I'm sure that structurally he spent too much time with Neale's rags and not enough with the transition to riches.

For over an hour our hero struggles bitterly, becoming an outcast homeless person. Then rather abruptly he's getting his writing inspiration and turning into a great success. This imbalance is probably because Eric saw the poverty part as more dramatic and emotion-driven.

Still, for those unfamiliar with Walsch and his writings, the movie may come off as not too interesting. Only when one is familiar with the writing product (for myself, the books should be included in "Great Books of the Western World" Series) that the bio takes on special meaning.

Fortunately, fine Canadian actor Henry Czerny is cast in the lead role. (Who can forget his mesmerizing performance in "Boys of St. Vincent"?) Yet, Czerny can't save the tedium of DelaBarre's script.

As for the film title, it has little to do with the book per se (how can one make a film of a book that consists entirely of dialog . . . Qs&As?).

In the end, it's appropriate that the film be judged as film and, according to that criteria, it deserves a less that satisfactory rating.

I was very familiar with much of the subject matter of the books by Neale Donald Walsch whose "human story" is portrayed in this movie. I was very curious to see how this mass of spiritual material would be integrated into a story based on the trans-formative phase of his life. What I found was a story that I could identify with and which had many of the universal elements of despair, cry for help, and a response. There was no element of preaching , but rather the message to look inside oneself to the answers which abide. The acting and the cinematography was exquisite in bringing out the depths and extremes of the human experience. These were/are real everyday people with real experiences with whom any one who has ever had a sense of hopelessness can identify. The movie left me touched and uplifted and open to possibilities.

This movie was good - thought provoking, touching and inspiring. I really liked it however i acknowledge that it will divide people - it's really for those who've read the book and respond to the authors message. If you relate to this and are interested in knowing more about Neale Donald Walsch's story, there's a good chance you'll be pleasantly surprised by this movie. I was. I thought it was well put together, gave due attention to the different parts of the authors story, didn't play him out to be some savior or evangelist and wasn't sugar coated. I don't agree with the infomercial comments, and I'm Australian and we have little tolerance for infomercials and cheesy sales pitches. Obviously its not a big budget movie and its more about the story and the message for those that hear it.

I saw a preview of this movie on Oct 22nd and very much enjoyed it.

Except for the main character's fake beard which I also found distracting (see someone else's post on this), this was a good, thought-provoking film. The overall theme should resonate with people who feel there's more to our existence and for that matter, what God is, than what we've been taught to believe in church. Probably not a movie for the extreme religious zealots out there or atheists either.

But, this is not some sort of exploitative, religious flick. You won't be hit over the head with a holier-than-thou guilt trip. And I'm not sure this or any other movie can change anyone's life either, as some may suggest. It is inspirational, though.

I've never read the books, but the author truly believes what happened to him and the movie simply chronicles his story. This sort of movie is a good way of sharing such a story with lots of others and hopefully this one was not produced just to pocket more profits.

I hope it is well-received and stays at the theaters for a long run.

Proving the so-called spiritual genre still has an awfully long way to go before feeling half has meaningful as underlying content would suggest, this quest for meaning and purpose remains ironically dull for it's intended purpose. Rather then adapting Neale Donald Walsch's massively successful spiritual dialogs, the film version of Conversations with God plays more like a biography, detailing the catalyst behind this reluctant author's unique journey which saw him living on the streets to becoming an international bestseller.

In a film plagued with bad choices, choosing to go the docudrama route proves one of the only wise decisions, producing a few of the Lifetime-worthy affair's only authentic and moving sequences. It is a testament to the inept direction then, when any and all emotional sincerity takes place during the initial struggling and unanimously subsides when relaying the inspirational turn of events that will fail to inspire the viewer. Proving quite contradictory indeed, the more Conversations with God presses on the book's inspirational themes of love, surrender, and other random insights, the less impact any previously watched glimmer of truth seems to reap.

There is just a massive divide between parlaying this intensely personal information in a way that does not feel trite, even laughably condescending, to all but the most ardent of sheep-fans... Meaning, until dedicated efforts into this budding genre begin translating our inner spiritual discussions more believably by refining their techniques into many more subtle shades of consciousness, they will continue to bare the new-age brunt of jokes, contradict what they so earnestly try to capture, and give moviegoers every which reason to extract spiritual qualities from other genres that unconsciously produce this sentiment so much clearer, with a lot less strain. For the few heartfelt moments that detail Walsch's struggle with homelessness, the film rises above the emotional sterile, Hallmark-prone manipulation that the majority seems to be. However, anyone who is not already begging to enjoy this movie, having been a rabid fan of the author's work, has every right to leer in cynical jest at the film's unintentionally ironic tone of detached insincerity.