OVP: Breakthrough (2019)

Film: Breakthrough (2019)
Stars: Marcel Ruiz, Chrissy Metz, Josh Lucas, Topher Grace, Dennis Haysbert
Director: Roxann Dawson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"I'm Standing With You")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

All right, let's do this.  Every year, the Oscars (usually the Makeup or Original Song categories) will throw me such a curveball with a movie that I would never normally see.  A movie that, say, is totally outside my wheelhouse, and rarely in a good way (where I'm discovering a hidden gem).  But I am fully committed to the Oscar Viewing Project both because I think this could be one of the coolest things about my life (how many other people have undertaken, successfully, such an endeavor?) and because I am always vested in exploring film, in its good and bad forms.  So after it sitting on my counter for a week, with just a few days left before the Oscars ceremony, I figured it was time for me to give Breakthrough a try.  For those unfamiliar, this is a Christian film, the kind that plays in Theater 14 of your multiplex (or, if you're in my home town, runs for three weeks), and one that was nominated for Best Original Song, giving Diane Warren an eleventh chance to lose an Oscar.  But what of the movie (and the song within it)?  Let's see what it entailed, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in an exurban city outside of St. Louis, in 2015.  The story focuses on John (Ruiz), a 14-year-old basketball player (and also high school student, though the film makes sure to frame it in that order) who is struggling with his adoptive parents Joyce (Metz) and Brian (Lucas).  Brian isn't having as hard of a time with this, but it's a struggle for Joyce, who is also quarreling with her new paster Jason (Grace) a clergyman who wants to invite more modern approaches (such as Christian rap and sermons that allude to The Bachelor) into her conservative community.  One day while playing on thin ice, John falls through, and is pronounced dead, but Joyce's faith perseveres, and (as portrayed in the film) her prayers are answered not once, but multiple times, as John survives without any major repercussions to his long-term health, and Joyce comes to terms with her frustrations with both her pastor and her family's growing pains.

I don't want to be insulting here.  I have actually quite liked some Christian films in the past, and consider myself a member of the flock (I go to church semi-regularly).  I enjoyed, say, Ben-Hur and think it's a masterpiece.  But Breakthrough is not Ben-Hur, and it's also not for anyone who has questioned the wisdom of their religion, or the holes in it.  The film is presented as Joyce, the devout, holy mother, against everyone else, but particularly members of the scientific community (there's multiple scenes where she shouts down doctor's who are providing concrete, scientific fact), demonizing them.  It's also a little gross that the two most skeptical characters in the film are the only two significant black characters in the movie, particularly since in-real-life these two people were white.

This is one of multiple problems with the film.  Metz is miscast in the role, as she's far too young to be able to convincingly play Joyce Smith as written (the real life Joyce Smith would have been twenty years older than Metz was at the time of John's accident).  As someone who grew up in a conservative, Christian midwestern town, and isn't that much different than Metz in terms of my age, my problems (and the problems of parishioners my age) would not have been with rap music or a pastor's haircut, but instead we would have had some leniency because we'd grown up with this style of Christianity.  Instead it would have been a problem for women of my mom or grandma's generation, which is what the real-life Smith is.  This makes it difficult to get into Metz's character-why is she somehow SO sheltered that she's not a realistic depiction of a person?  The script never provides us answers, and Metz isn't able to gloss over this juxtaposition in her character.

The script also glosses past any holes in the logic of the film.  There's a late scene in the picture where John's teacher inappropriately asks her recovered student why God saved him and not her husband, and the simple answer from John is "I don't know."  This is a common answer in real life, but it doesn't really work in the confines of a movie where we repeatedly see prayer as the answer to all of life's problems, particularly over science.  The movie introducing this conversation makes it fair game to state that "the lord works in mysterious ways" isn't a satisfying answer, and is a huge plot issue for a film that is filled with them.  Why is it that Joyce is the only character that has no doubts?  Why is it that she's constantly tested by people of seemingly similar faith to her, and she's always right, but when the teacher asks a question (more to the screenwriter at this point than John) we don't get an answer?  This is a crux in the story, and a crux in this style of film-you can't claim prayer is the answer when it frequently isn't.  Combined with generally wooden acting (does Josh Lucas have a gambling problem we need to address considering the role choices he made this year?) and hackneyed dialogue, Breakthrough doesn't have the willingness to address some of the tough conversations it starts, simply wanting to brush past that to focus on the "medical miracle" and not the "how's" and "why's" behind it.

Oh...the original song.  It's insipid and played over the end credits and has almost nothing to do with the movie even though this is a movie that frequently relies on Christian Country in the background of its biggest moments (it also HI-lariously cuts the "Hot Damn's" from "Uptown Funk" in perhaps the funniest moment of the movie).  We need to give Diane Warren an Oscar so they can stop nominating not only this dreck, but these types of nauseating sugar-filled ballads that went out-of-style everywhere other than this category in the 90's.