’90 Minutes in Heaven’ cannot be saved

“90 Minutes in Heaven” is based on Dan Piper’s 2004 New York Times best-selling real-life experience story.

Director Michael Polish’s new film, simply put, is no match for the book and is proof that some books should never, ever be made into films.

Don Piper (Hayden Christensen) is on his way home from a Christian conference in Texas in 1989 when he’s involved in a terrible accident on a bridge. He flatlines and by the time he is in the hospital and resuscitated, he has spent 90 minutes in heaven where he meets with relatives and friends.

The problem is, for one hour and 34 minutes of screen time Piper lays in his hospital bed and gets visits from his wife, Eva (Kate Bosworth – she’s married to director Michael Polish) and others, including a nurse who pushes him to snap out of the funk he is in. The dialogue is filled with cliche’s and semonettes. We don’t get a sense of what he experienced in those 90 minutes until the end of the film, and even then, it’s underwhelming.

Polish ought to have taken cues from films such as “The Butterfly and the Diving Bell” and “The Sea Inside” for ways to portray the inner lives of bed-ridden people that are moving and convincing.

Perhaps a limited budget limited the amount of imagination that could have made this film intriguing.

The original story may be comforting and inspiring, but the film is a snooze.

My 14 year-old nephew saw it with me and he said, “You’re not going to recommend this to anyone, are you? It’s so boring.”

Nope.

The tag line for the film could read: “Christian film comforts Christians.”

When sight and sound, the languages of film, are done well and then integrated, then you have cinema, you have art, you have a film. But when the sound is all talking and Christian hymns and songs, kill me now. You have to leave something to the imagination and this film left NOTHING to the imagination. The emotional quotient was about zero except the brief scene at the end with the young man in church.

Despite the blatant John 3:16 poster on the wall, ’90 Minutes in Heaven’ simply cannot be saved.