Faith based movies, like every other genre out there, can be dumb sometimes. If you’re expecting some big lecture or something on how this movie is dumb because it is a Christian movie, then move along, sir or ma’am. Movies Are Dumb Sometimes worries more about the technical and storytelling aspects of television and film! The Girl Who Believes In Miracles is no different from any Hollywood blockbuster!
Shockingly, this movie’s Wiki page is almost blank!
Unlike a lot of people, I’m fortunate enough to able to see movies for what they are: Entertainment! So, let’s get into why The Girl Who Believes In Miracles is dumb sometimes!
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Synopsis of The Girl Who Believes In Miracles
I saw The Girl Who Believe in Miracles on a whim (and because my local theater has had the same 3 movies for 3 weeks). I knew nothing about the movie other than what I saw on the poster. Of course, I went to see it because Hercules (Kevin Sorbo plays Dr. Ben Riley, not Hercules) is in it! I could tell this looked like a Christian movie, so of course you need an ancient god in it, ha!
In short, little Sara Hopkins (Austyn Johnson) is ultra religious. She accepts that God doesn’t always give her what she wants because her Grandpa, Sam Donovan (Peter Coyote) gives her the explanation that perhaps other, better things are meant to be. Just because her brother, Danny (Luke Harmon) loses this soccer game doesn’t mean he’s not destined for great things in soccer.
After her brother’s loss, Sara, Luke, and their parents Bonnie and Alex (Mira Sorvino and Burgess Jenkins) meet at Sam’s house for a day with the family. Luke’s girlfriend, Cindy (Tommi Rose), tags along as well. The three kids go fishing, where Sara finds a dead bird. She wants God to bring the bird back to life and Luke basically tells her to stop being silly. Luke and Cindy eventually leave to make out.
Later, Luke and Cindy return, only to see the bird come back to life in Sara’s hands! Sara claims God is there and brought the bird back to life, to which of course everyone in the movie contradicts except her grandfather.
Sara starts to heal those she prays for. She also obtains the ability to draw quite well, and she draws those who she later on meets.
Let the Healing Begin!
Her best friend, Mark (Paul-Mikél Williams), is paralyzed from the waist down from an automobile accident from a year prior. Luke’s arch nemesis on the soccer field, Alvie (Collin Place), has his dog run down by his friends. Among many others, Sara heals them all with God, all while her body takes the toll for it.
Eventually, Sara’s body begins to fade. Dr. Riley refuses to believe anything God related, which we find out later in the movie is because he lost his son years prior. He’s very skeptical and continually tries to find a scientific reason for everything happening.
When Sara eventually falls unconscious, she comes back for a couple seconds to tell her Grandpa to take her to the lake where she first saw God. Her grandpa rounds up a small group and devise a plan to break Sara out of the hospital and get her to the lake.
The plan is successful, but about 20 individuals make it to the lake where Sara is. God then not only reveals Himself to Sara, but to everyone there. Of course, the camera equipment doesn’t record and no one thinks about pulling out their cell phones to record God.
Will the Dead Rise?
The family takes dead Sara back to a bed so everyone can grieve, but then Luke finds a picture Sara allegedly drew of God accepting her into the lake. Moments later, he finds a drawing of Sara running away from God, and Sara comes back to life!
The house has a crowd of people outside. Sara goes outside and explains that God doesn’t heal through her anymore, but they all need to turn to him to find healing.
The Girl Who Believes In Miracles concludes with a scene in the Church, this time packed full instead of sparingly.
Normally I don’t do a movie summary, but seeing that one was hard to find on The Girl Who Believes In Miracles, I felt it necessary to give the backstory. Is this something I should do from now on?
Now, The Girl Who Believes In Miracles Gets Dumb Sometimes!
The Soccer Sequence – a Kick in the Movie’s Balls!
If there is one thing I’d love for religious movies to withhold doing, it’s aerial shots. I don’t think they’re necessary except for a few times to establish location. It’s very cliché and easy, but I guess movies have to follow their tropes! The movie starts with two aerial shots and they don’t end there, so be ready for them.
First off, it’s not fair to compare independent (less money) films to those in the realm of Hollywood. The movie’s audio seems way off par early in the movie, especially at the soccer game. You almost immediately you can hear the difference. I know this is something some people will complain about, but they need to calm themselves down. However, for a movie with a theatrical release, the audio team should’ve tried harder!
However, it’s not the audio that’s really bad at the soccer game. It’s when we meet Mr. Sam Donovan.
Two troublesome teenagers attempt to steal some food from the snack bar. We cut to the camera on the ground and a leg sticks out a whole second or so before both teenagers trip over the leg. It was kind of an eye-roller for me!
Sam gives these two kids a lecture and they run off, never to be heard from again.
I also need to question how good of a Mom Bonnie is to her son, Luke. During the game, a yellow card is drawn and Bonnie is so lost as to what that means. I’m not the biggest fan of soccer, but I’ve seen that yellow card plenty of times. This is a very important game, and Luke has been playing soccer for some time, yet his Mom has no idea what it is. I also wonder if she or her husband even have jobs because they never go to work through this whole movie!
Dumb Character Trait = Dumb People?
The next major dumb thing in The Girl Who Believes In Miracles isn’t just a character flaw – a lot of people have this weird train of thought. As the three kids go fishing at the lake behind Grandpa’s house, Sara discovers a dead bird and becomes terribly upset over it. So upset, in fact, she asks God to bring it back to life.
But what about those fish? It’s strange that someone will become distraught over one dead animal and is perfectly fine with another animal being tricked into captivity with food, then suffocated to death, then to have its flesh ripped apart, and then devoured by the same person who is sad over a bird’s natural death!
I’ll admit – at first I was very confused as to why Sara got sick out of nowhere. So, if it took a couple healings for you to connect that she was suffering so others could be healed, you were not alone!
However, what confused me was how NOBODY made that connection until very much later on in the movie. I know being on the outside looking in and having no connection to that family whatsoever might allow me to approach their issues with a different mindset, but I digress.
Like Sara getting sick out of nowhere, she also gains the ability to draw fantastically out of nowhere. I don’t think anyone does that. One of the parents does tell us that she’s never drawn like that before.
Think of it like if Steven Spielberg was making movies like Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. Then, overnight, he makes E.T. Wouldn’t that cause some sort of red flags to go up? The fantastic drawing baffles Bonnie and Alex, but only for a little bit.
The Bully Has a Soft Spot, and Teenager Drives Blind
Next up, we have the scene in which Sara revives the dog of Luke’s arch rival, Alvie. Up until this point, Alvie comes off as the typical a bully dingbat, except when it comes to his dog. He even yanks some fast food out of his friend’s hands to feed it to his dog!
Of course, Alvie mocks Luke and Sara. While Luke attempts to defend his little sister, Alvie’s friends pile back into their SUV. The driver, while getting in his car, doesn’t take his eyes off his phone. He starts the car and accelerates without taking his eyes off his phone. This leads to him running over Alvie’s dog! Alvie loses his mind. Turns out the big bad bully dingbat has a soft side.
There are so many questions about Alvie’s friends here. Why were they leaving? Were they not going to get Alvie? Was they so mad at him when he stole the cheeseburger that they just decided to ditch him? Was the driver hate-posting about Alvie on his phone and he couldn’t put down his phone for ONE SECOND to make sure the road was clear?
I know teenagers can be very careless, but I don’t know of many that would basically put on a blindfold and go drive.
Sara, through God, revives Alvie’s dog. From this moment, Alvie becomes Sara’s stalker for the rest of the movie.
The Girl Who Believes In Miracles Heals 3 through God
One thing I’ve always found amazing is that when people gather, they all do so at seemingly the same time. For example, in The Girl Who Believes in Miracles, a news reporter is present when Mark walks again at Hercules’s clinic. She does a news story on it, and of course, people flock to Sara’s house. The people, however, all seem to arrive at the same time.
Are you trying to tell me that all of these people proportionately spent the same amount of time looking up where Sara lived and took the same amount of time to get to her house, all at the same time? It happens at the end of the movie as well when they all go to pay their respects to Sara. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s weird!
The first time the flock shows up, though, the parents do a horrible job at wrangling in Sara. They see the people coming to the house. Sara wants to go outside to greet the people. They stop her and tell her its time for breakfast. Bonnie and Alex go into the kitchen and just leave Sara there freely walk outside. After a few moments, they come barreling through the front door like “WTF are you doing, Sara?!”
More like, “WTF are you bad parents, Bonnie and Alex!?”
Sara and God goes on a healing spree. They get another wheelchair bound boy to walk again (who is extremely unenthused by his ability to walk again), a blind girl (whose eyes go from white/glossed over to normal eyes in just seconds) to see again, and remove cancer from young Theresa (Stephanie Cood), of whom Sara drew a picture of earlier. Sara collapses, and she is admitted to the hospital.
Underutilized Cindy
Of course, the press is losing its mind. They need to get Sara out of the hospital for some reason, and they obviously can’t go out the front since no one in the press thinks of watching the side or back doors.
This is where I got excited for Luke’s girlfriend, Cindy. She claims she will distract the press so they can get out the back door. Someone asks her “You think you can handle the press?” and she puts on her game face and marches towards the press.
And that’s it.
For about 2 seconds, I was so pumped that someone was going to do something bad mamma jamma work in The Girl Who Believes In Miracles. I, to this day, wonder how she handled the press. Obviously, she’s an attractive young woman, but did she use her womanliness to distract the press? Did she throw a brick at them? How did this teenager successfully distract a large crowd?
Cindy’s role in this story felt underutilized. Sara and Cindy seem to be best friends, but Cindy doesn’t really seem to matter as much as she should to the rest of the characters in the movie.
God Should’ve Struck Down Luke Hopkins!!
Nearing the climax of the movie, another hospital breakout happens. Sam is attempting to fulfill his granddaughter’s wish of going to the lake before she dies.
During this breakout, Theresa puts on a blonde wig and she replaces Sara in her hospital bed. This perked my curiosity to enormous levels. How was this Latina going to fool the family of the white girl? For minutes, I sat there, on the edge of my seat, waiting to see how this was going to play out.
Then it came. Bonnie and Alex go in to check on Sara. Almost immediately, Bonnie reaches over to turn Sara over! Theresa just pops up with a “UH!” face! She gave 0 effort in keeping up the façade! They may as well just have put a mannequin in the bed!
The breakout team successfully gets Sara out to the car. Then guess what they do.
They wait.
They wait until her grandpa gets out to his truck.
Why? Why did they wait? They should’ve been caught here. You can’t be making stupid mistakes like this in high pressure, high risk situations and get away with it! God should’ve cast a blue bolt onto Luke for wasting valuable minutes just sitting there!
Luke EVENTUALLY puts the pedal to the metal and rushes to get his sister to the lake.
Luke’s “speeding” causes a police chase and the rest of the breakout team is on their tail.
The Slowest Cop Chase During the Worst Storm of the Year
But would you ever believe this is a police chase? It was more like a police chase of molasses going uphill in the winter time! They definitely could’ve put some cameras lower to the ground to give the perception that this was actually a dangerous chase. Perhaps because this is a faith-based film needing to create a sense of urgency in a police chase scene is not necessary. What do you think?
On this night, there is a storm. One of the cops claims it’s the storm of the year even, but you’d have an extremely hard time convincing ME of that! I’ve been through storms that would make the storm in The Girl Who Believes In Miracles look like a drop in a bucket! In one hurdle, a tree falls in front of Luke’s car. I almost laughed out loud because I was expected to believe this “storm” blew over a tree?
Because of that tree, Luke must carry Sara to the lake, but thankfully, out of nowhere, Sara’s stalker, Alvie, shows up. Luke and Alvie work as a team to get Sara to the lake, but not encountering a giant, threatening black wolf! Of course, Alvie’s dog just jumps in front of the wolf, barks a few times, and the wolf leaves.
Sara, Luke, and Alvie arrive at the lake. Moments later, about 20 people of all ages and occupations show up! How did they do that? How did they track get to the lake SO fast in the middle of the storm of the year?
Now, Sara is very happy to die here, and they take her to a bed to rest in peace there for a bit.
The One Character not Purposefully Mentioned in The Girl Who Believes In Miracles
Perhaps you’ve noticed I haven’t spoken of an important character through all this. My favorite character in this movie is Pastor Mac (Darryl Cox). He added some comic relief, despite being the pastor. In Sara’s bedroom, her family holds one of her drawings. Pastor Mac casually walks up behind them and declares, “Hey! I’ll hang that up in the church!”
How egotistical of Pastor Mac! He thinks he can just roll up and confiscate a new family heirloom? He didn’t even ask!
Shortly after, Sara comes back to life after Luke finds a drawing of God releasing her back to Earth. Right when she came back to life, I had an awesome idea for a sequel, which if this movie does get a follow up, needs to happen.
My pitch for the sequel to The Girl Who Believes In Miracles: “What if you could only get into Heaven once?” It would be Sara later on in life and somehow, she finds out she can’t get back into heaven because her selfishness of wanting to go back to her family! She turned her back ON GOD! Maybe, to get back to Heaven, she needs to slay the Devil!
OK, back to the movie!
Once Sara wakes back up, as mentioned earlier, another crowd of people somehow manifests at the same time in front of the house she’s in. Of course she wants to go out to talk to them, and how is she presented? As the new Jesus! Jesara? Jesusina?
Yep! She is outside with her all let down, flowing from side to side, donning an almost oversized pink robe. I would love for the filmmakers to try to convince me that she is not portrayed as the new Jesus. I sense that’s exactly what they were going for though. It was just kind of a funny visual to me.
Final Thoughts on The Girl Who Believes In Miracles
To add on to the sequel – I think it would be interesting to see what this town is like 10 years from now. The Girl Who Believes In Miracles starts with a near empty church and ends with a full church. In 10 years, would that church be empty again? Does time make people complacent? I’m quite interested in this sequel, if you can’t tell! Should I write it? Is someone else writing it? Let me know!
I must apologize. I did have more notes written down for this movie, but I procrastinated in writing the blog post and doing the podcast. Some of my notes have no context, whoops! Perhaps I’ll skim the movie later on at some point and do an update post! Movies are dumb sometimes, but I’m totally dumb sometimes too!
This movie wasn’t full of dumbness, obviously. It does have some touching moments in it. The performances were pretty solid overall. Peter Coyote’s monologue to God pushed this movie to its acting limit! Besides the drone shots, the cinematography wasn’t annoying.
I know this is the longest of my 3 post/podcast reviews, but that isn’t a bad thing. I tend to be more critical of the underdogs because I want to see them succeed. Hopefully, my thoughts will help future filmmakers as well!
The Girl Who Believes In Miracles is a feel good movie that’ll warm the hearts of those who care to see it!
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