Positive thinking poses as prayer in Believe

Films seemingly intended for Christian audiences risk alienating secular crowds. But the new film Believe might just put off both groups with a heavy-handed agenda too syrupy for nonbelievers and a superficial treatment of faith and prayer too bland for the faithful.

Hard times have hit a rural Virginia hamlet and its main employer, Peyton Automotive Works. Consequently, company owner Matthew Peyton (Ryan O’Quinn) plans to cancel the town’s Christmas pageant, news that riles the townsfolk more than does the prospect of lost jobs. Peyton Automotive, per its bylaws, must put on the pageant without charge, but Matthew tells hostile attendees at a town council meeting that for years he’s been funding the pageant out of his own shrinking pocket. (It’s unclear why the mayor and shop owners can’t simply organize their own festival.)

Matthew twice denies he’s Ebenezer Scrooge. In fact, he’s closer to another Christmastime convert, George Bailey, and hardly guilty of anything more than aloofness and workaholism. Matthew does suggest to his almost-girlfriend, Nancy (Shawnee Smith), that it’s the government’s job to feed the hungry and house the poor. But he’s also quick to shoot back “Christmas” to anyone who drops an H-bomb (“holiday”).

Writer-director Billy Dickson’s greatest shortcoming, besides his generic positivism, might be his fondness for slow motion. Alas, Matthew’s stroll through a municipal building hallway lined with scowling townsfolk doesn’t end in any Matrix-like aerial kung fu.

Matthew’s workers go on strike, and some of them mug him and set his car ablaze. He lies unconscious in the street until a young boy rouses him, introducing himself as Clarence (Issac Ryan Brown).

“You must be an angel,” Matthew sputters. Clarence isn’t an angel, second-class or otherwise, but he is angling for the part of Gabriel in the pageant. The exuberant Clarence and his single mom, Sharon (Danielle Nicolet), take Matthew into their small, unheated apartment, where for several days they treat his physical and spiritual wounds.

“All things are possible if you believe in your heart and pray hard enough,” chimes Clarence (misidentified as “Isaac” in the end credits’ soundtrack acknowledgements). Sharon nods approvingly, but Matthew won’t be so easily converted. He does warm to Sharon’s Florence Nightingale–esque touch, though, and the film (rated PG for some violence, thematic elements, and brief mild language) gets itself a little love triangle going. Just what it needs.

In the finale’s sub-two-minute blitzkrieg of revelations, the film answers the big questions: Who was trying to force Matthew to sell his business? What did Matthew do with the dozens of homeless people who moved into his plant during the workers’ strike? Did Clarence get to play Gabriel in the Christmas pageant? Repeatedly mugged by “You gotta have faith” and “Everything happens for a reason,” did Matthew finally believe?

I believe Christianity will survive this film. I have to believe.