A film like this is only on at one time of the year. Although it's about letters to God rather than Santa Claus, its theme of dreams coming true and its vague sentimentality are just right for the holiday season. The film is about a bunch of misfits and loners discovering a social conscience when they work in a department of the postal service that handles letters addressed to God and other people who don't have regular mailing addresses.
This is certainly no ask-god version of Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (filmed as Advice to the Lovelorn and Miss Lonelyhearts), where a character faced with innumerable demands from desperate members of the public is slowly driven mad. It seems there are few problems in this film that cannot be solved with a misappropriated saxophone (indeed, with all the gifts being doled out, the film's idea of God is little different to Father Christmas). Wider issues of poverty, illness, death and other injustices are ignored.
As an atheist, I was a little disappointed to see people talking about God inspiring the characters, as though nobody could do a good deed without being an agent of the Lord. It seems odd that a film with a potentially blasphemous premise (people impersonating God) could end up as such an affirmation of religion, but in the cinema people who impersonate priests and nuns tend to end up as heroes (We're No Angels, etc) while actual priests turn out to be villains. This film certainly panders to the audience's need for a feel-good spirituality that is simple and undemanding, without any of the complexities of organised religion.
To be fair, the crew and cast are competent and while it's not Garry Marshall's best film, it's not his most shamelessly manipulative either (Pretty Woman is far stupider). The characters are an appealingly motley bunch that could work well in a sitcom, some of the dialogue is funny, and Dear God is in many ways a decent piece of schmaltz. If you forget about it as soon as it's finished, it's probably fine.
This is certainly no ask-god version of Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts (filmed as Advice to the Lovelorn and Miss Lonelyhearts), where a character faced with innumerable demands from desperate members of the public is slowly driven mad. It seems there are few problems in this film that cannot be solved with a misappropriated saxophone (indeed, with all the gifts being doled out, the film's idea of God is little different to Father Christmas). Wider issues of poverty, illness, death and other injustices are ignored.
As an atheist, I was a little disappointed to see people talking about God inspiring the characters, as though nobody could do a good deed without being an agent of the Lord. It seems odd that a film with a potentially blasphemous premise (people impersonating God) could end up as such an affirmation of religion, but in the cinema people who impersonate priests and nuns tend to end up as heroes (We're No Angels, etc) while actual priests turn out to be villains. This film certainly panders to the audience's need for a feel-good spirituality that is simple and undemanding, without any of the complexities of organised religion.
To be fair, the crew and cast are competent and while it's not Garry Marshall's best film, it's not his most shamelessly manipulative either (Pretty Woman is far stupider). The characters are an appealingly motley bunch that could work well in a sitcom, some of the dialogue is funny, and Dear God is in many ways a decent piece of schmaltz. If you forget about it as soon as it's finished, it's probably fine.