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Letters to God Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG (for thematic material) Genre: Drama, Family Theater release: April 09, 2010 by Vivendi Entertainment Directed by: David Nixon Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes Cast: Tanner Maguire (Tyler Doherty), Jeffrey S. S. Johnson (Brady McDaniels), Robyn Lively (Maddy Doherty), Ralph Waite (Cornelius Perryfield), Maree Cheatham (Olivia), Bailee Madison (Samantha Perryfield) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Tyler Doherty is an eight-year-old cancer patient who loves God first and soccer second. Brady McDaniels is a mailman struggling with alcoholism and the break-up of his family. Tyler writes direct, heartfelt Letters to God as a means of praying his way through his illness. Brady picks up those Letters on his postal route and is touched and changed by his encounters with Tyler's faith; so are many of the other characters who populate the unabashedly Christian family drama Letters to God.

The film's co-director Patrick Doughtie, who lost his real-life son Tyler to cancer in 2005, wrote the initial screenplay for Letters to God. Although Doughtie fictionalized many of the elements of Tyler's story for the big screen, it's clear that this film comes from a deeply personal place. The compelling raw material was a perfect match for newly minted Possibility Pictures, director David Nixon's production company. Nixon previously produced the mostly volunteer-made surprise Christian hits Facing the Giantsand Fireproof. Letters is his first time in the director's chair and his first opportunity to work with a budget large enough to secure a professional cast and crew. The result is a film more technically polished than Facing the Giantsor Fireproof, but equally overtly evangelical in its narrative—meaning it will likely delight viewers who loved those earlier movies and further frustrate those who longed for subtler storytelling.

Tanner Maguire as Tyler Doherty

There is much to love about Letters to God. Tanner Maguire (Saving Sarah Cain) gives Tyler a nice mix of spunk and pathos, and Bailee Madison (Brothers) makes Tyler's best friend Sam a winsome scene-stealer. Veteran actor Ralph Waite (of Waltons fame) does what he can with some rather dialogue-heavy exchanges, and Robyn Lively lends some credible pathos to her role as Tyler's mom. Jeffrey S. S. Johnson is the strongest lead; despite an uneven script and some odd progressions in the plot he makes mailman Brady a vulnerable and likeable protagonist. (Strangely, he is evocative of actor Greg Kinnear, who starred in another movie about a postal worker and heavenward Letters in 1996's Dear God, a similarity that may be distracting to some viewers.)

But as well intentioned and sometimes well acted as this film is, it is not always able to rise above its own earnest agenda in order to tell its story in an absorbing manner. Part of the problem lies in pacing and editing—the film seems to languish from scene to scene and repeat expository information, culminating in three or four "endings" that simply lead to further endings. A fresh pair of scissors in the final stages of production might have really helped. Conversely, there are elements left unexplained that leave the viewer craving context—such as the family's visit to "Give Kids the World." An amusement park created specifically to host terminally ill children and their families in Orlando, "Give Kids the World" is a charity close to Doughtie's heart and one the filmmakers seek to support, but it provides a confusing backdrop for some key scenes in the movie because the setting is unclear.

Mailman Brady McDaniels (Jeffrey S. S. Johnson) befriends Tyler

Editing aside, the thematic elements of the film are both its greatest strengths and weaknesses. Terminally ill children always make deeply moving but potentially melodramatic protagonists, and Letters frequently slips into "Movie of the Week" or even "Extreme Home Makeover" territory. A more unique difficulty with Letters is its expressly protestant, Christian, evangelical perspective. Characters stop in the middle of the drama to pray—a grandma with her frustrated teenaged grandson, for example, or a pastor with a troubled man he's just met. These scenes are not entirely inauthentic—I know, as an evangelical, that we are wont to pray just that way. But they make for awkward filmmaking, partly because the language will be foreign to non-churched viewers and mostly because films thrive on action and it is very hard to depict quiet, introspective prayer with dramatic impact.

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