"Dear God" is so painstakingly boring, manipulative and predictable it's hard to watch despite some decent yet watered down performances by those onboard the project.
Greg Kinnear plays a young slacker who is innocently arrested and sentenced to finding a job--yes, finding a job--by the bad guy from "Total Recall," who doesn't look like he's having a very good time making this movie. Kinnear takes a job at a local post office and gets a spot in the Dead Letter Department, where all the letters to Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, and God are sorted and thrown out.
But as Kinnear avoids his odd co-workers, he finds himself wanting to respond to the "Dear God" letters, hence the title of the film--big surprise--"Dear God."
Kinnear's character is extremely obnoxious and annoying. At times the filmmakers want us to feel sorry for the Innocent Young Man Going Through Turbulent Times, but then the character does things that are inexcusibly ignorant and unbiased. For example, take a scene where Kinnear is on trial. We're supposed to feel sorry for him. But the next moment he's up in the judge's face making wise cracks and disobeying all courtroom procedures. This is supposed to amuse the audience. Yeah, right.
The film's jokes are about as tired as every other average comedy out there. Too many scenes do not expand to their full potential, and instead we get scenes like the "Stand behind the yellow line" gag that not only goes on WAYYY too long, but has been done a million times before in a million different films.
The characters are not only weak, but one-dimensional and totally distant: We can't feel for any of them one way or another.
The characters' dialogue is about as stiff and stereotypical as it can get: You feel like the writers were trying to think of corny dialogue. And boy, if that's what they were looking for, they got it right.
"Dear God" had a good premise with promising potential, but due to a half-baked, sentimentally-controlling script, unlikable characters and an awful sense of humor, this film fails miserably at what it promises us.
1.5/5 stars -
John Ulmer
