Recensioni di Metacritic

A bland tear-jerker that lacks the drama or commitment to wholly come off.

More often than not, I Still Believe feels like the cinematic equivalent of the sort of Christian pop songs its main character performs, filled with soaring choruses and heavy-handed lyrics. Every emotion is telegraphed to the hilt, with results that feel more manipulative than affecting. The fact that it's a true story only partially mitigates its more cloying aspects.

Thanks to the immensely appealing performances by Apa and Robertson, it’s easy for the audience to take a rooting interest in the sometimes awkward, sometimes amusing development of the budding romance between Jeremy and Melissa.

A sort of “Me, God and the Dying Girl,” the movie is well-made (if slow) and features an attractive cast and a lot of amiable (if bland) religious pop-rock.

The power of the Camps’ story is hard to deny, but it would almost be impossible to make it seem more hollow.

Though the movie’s raison d’être is unmistakable from the outset, the most compelling moments come not when God’s name is being invoked out loud and with great frequency, but rather when the loving symbiosis between two young people facing adversity and caring for each other is tenderly communicated without uttering any words, conveyed in something as simple as the direct gaze between two pairs of locked eyes. Now that’s the notion of a higher power in which we can all believe.

Those looking for inspiration will find it without looking too hard, but those who don’t attend church regularly will be as bored as they would be by a sermon.

As far as the preaching-to-the-choir genre goes, though, I Still Believe is a far more tolerable exercise than, say, last year’s anti-abortion screed "Unplanned" or any recent movie with the word “Heaven” in the title (Heaven Is for Real, Miracles from Heaven).

In attempting to tell the story of this young woman’s death — not her life, no time for that either — I Still Believe cheapens it.

Melissa is the only fully developed character in an overlong, badly paced film filled with cliched dialogue and accented by pleasant yet forgettable music.