Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

pnr_miscellany It's an OK movie - not great, but OK. It's basically a version of It's a Wonderful Life, just from the other perspective. You get the same kinds of themes and all, but this time George (Ben Walker, actually) gets to leave and then sees not how rotten it would be if he hadn't lived, but how much happier he'd have been had he stayed behind.The hero of What If... can't, however, be the owner/manager of a savings & loan back at home. If he'd had the wonderful life instead of the life he actually chose, he'd be a preacher. Capra's masterpiece showed a deeply spiritual, loving, Christian way of doing business (particularly as set in opposition to the evil banker, Mr. Potter). Here we get the contrast between the preacher who is doing things just for the Lord, and the businessman doing things for the money. The morality play is absolutely clear cut, and in case you don't quite get it, there are sermons and prayers - some by cute little kids - to make sure you get the message.It also has its own Christian form of political correctness. They do have the hero (in his "what if" life) graduate from Moody Bible Institute (Baptist/revivalist, though not officially affiliated with any one denomination), but the church he serves is just "Little White Church" - no denomination, no history, no tradition, no nothing. Just the "Little White Church." This also makes it difficult to suspend disbelief and enter into the story as if these are real people whose struggles unfold before us.And so the movie comes up short.I find that in quite a bit of art - images, movies, music, books - produced by evangelicals. We can't quite trust the art. We seem afraid of not having it all nailed down so people can't misinterpret it. Instead of telling the story, we preach. Instead of singing the song, we preach. Instead of painting the picture, we preach. Instead of varied forms of art, we have sermon illustrations and most of them are pretty generic so as to be readily adaptable to whatever text you happen to be using this week.I wonder if this is not some sad legacy of the Protestant Reformation - the iconoclastic riots that destroyed statuary and stained glass and other "images" that tempted to idolatry. Are we still carrying that burden and that's why we have to surround our artistry with sermons lest we be tempted once again? I don't know, but it does seem that Catholic artists don't have the same problem, or at least not as severely.Don't get me wrong. Preaching is a form of art, too. There is certainly a place for the sermon and the sermon illustration. But a movie or a novel or a song or a picture can be just as God-glorifying without the sermon - and likely more so since it will be better art.Good art, like a good joke, is diminished if you have to explain it and if I could give any advice to young artists, it would be to let the art speak for itself. What If... can't quite bring itself to do that.

TxMike We found this one on Netflix streaming movies. As most others have recognized, we right away said "this is a different version of 'Family Man' with Nick Cage." And it is, although both of them were inspired by older movies which play on the same theme.That theme is, what would your life be if you had made a different decision at a critical point? Both movies treat the beginnings and the ends very similarly, but the middles are totally different. In "What If" Kevin Sorbo is Ben Walker who 15 years earlier was telling his girlfriend goodbye at the bus station as he was about to leave for 7 months. She was worried but he assured her "Nothing will come between us." Well 15 years later Ben is a very single, very smart, very wealthy, Harvard-educated businessman with an instinct for closing deals. And making lots of money. He is about to be made partner in his firm, and to celebrate he buys an expensive car. As he is driving towards his old home town the car acts up, gages all flash, the car dies.Reminiscent of the Don Knotts character in 'Pleasantville' who showed up with a new remote, John Ratzenberger as Mike the Angel shows up with a tow truck. He doesn't waste a lot of time telling Ben that he has been sent by 'the guy up there' to show Ben what his life would have been if he had returned to his girlfriend.That girlfriend is Kristy Swanson as Wendy Walker . After Mike the Angel puts Ben's lights out with one punch, Ben later awakens at his "home", complete with a wife (Wendy) and two cute daughters. It is Sunday, they are getting dressed for church, and Ben finds out he has just become their new pastor of this little white church in his hometown.So the movie, even with its serious theme has many funny parts. All three main actors are very good in their roles. We get to see how Ben handles this "glimpse" into the life he failed to choose.SPOILER, the ending: Ben is removed from his "glimpse" but is moved by the experience. He wants Wendy, he wants a family, and he wants to become a minister. When he looks her up, she is at that same station, about to take a bus to the city. He pleads with her to stay, but she thinks it is too late. She gets on the bus, then Ben watches it roll away. But then it returns, Mike the Angel is the driver now, and as it rolls away again Wendy is standing there with her suitcase. Then it flashes to a few years later, their daughter's birthday, Wendy pregnant, and we see the same scene that Ben had seen in old home movies during his "glimpse".

Anthony King I watched but I regret it. A man who swaps one evil for another. Two forms of right-wingedness (wingedness is now a word if it wasn't before) collide. What's best, a fast money earning jerk or a jerk that makes his children go to church. It shows up the inadequacies of both capitalism and Christianity. Appalling. I ticked "spoiler alert" but nothing could spoil this film more than anyone who was involved in it. The concept isn't new but could be intriguing if given decent treatment. When I think of all the creative people in the world who don't get the funding for their ideas. It's a sad state of affairs that garbage like this is using up a place that would be better used by a test card transmission.

Dan I very much enjoyed this movie, and though rare for me, I found myself tearing up more than once during this film. The acting was very good, and even the youngest girl was quite believable. The message was spot on as well.I want to address something I realized about the plot of this movie, which none of the current reviews (including the "it is a recreation of a recreation..." complaints) cover. The plot of this movie is much more complex than your typical "experiencing what an alternate world would be like if you do / don't make a certain decision", and I did not fully understand exactly what happened in this movie until considering it after the fact. I had such a preconceived notion of what was going to happen - that Ben would be taken back in time and get to decide again whether or not to leave on that bus - that when the movie went in an entirely different direction I didn't fully grasp what really happened.When Ben is taken by the angel to an "alternate reality" he is actually taken into his own future. This movie is not about undoing anything, or changing the past. It isn't even a movie about making the right choice, because Ben is never really given a choice to make. This film is about how a person's environment can drastically change them into someone else and cause them to deviate from God's will, and how the love and devotion of a Godly spouse is so important to any minister (or any Christian for that matter). Essentially Ben is given the gift of experiencing how fulfilled and happy he would be if married to Wendy, has children and is a minister. That simply wipes away the superficial lust and desires of his material life and shows him what he lacks. The entire point in the angel visiting Ben and letting him experience his future was simply to bring out the "real" Ben. Thus when Ben caught up to Wendy at the bus stop at the end of the movie and she's about to leave, she gets to see the true Ben she learned to love so many years before, and not the jaded, materialistic Ben.So here's the kicker - Wendy is the one that makes the important decision in this movie, and it is a vastly more difficult decision than the bad choice Ben made 13 years earlier. He had just popped up out of the blue, and it took tremendous faith for her to decide to give Ben a second chance after all that time. Wendy is a tremendous woman throughout this entire movie, and God went to all the trouble he did for her sake, to help her make the right decision.In fact, unlike other films of this type, we don't even see the "bad" alternate reality, which is what would have happened had Wendy left and Ben was left without her. Perhaps he would've returned to his life of investment banking and indeed he would've been like the old man finally seeking forgiveness on his death bed. But it wasn't Ben's decision that kept him from that fate - it was Wendy who truly saves him in the end.