I Can Only Imagine Review

At the beginning of the month in my March movie preview, I had to make a judgment call as to which Christian movie, if any, would become this year's big Easter hit. It's always a tough prediction with Christian movies, but all signs pointed away from "I Can Only Imagine." Not only did the Erwin Brothers' previous two wide releases, "Moms' Night Out" and "Woodlawn" both opened around $4 million, but the highest opening weekend ever for distributor Roadside Attractions was January's "Forever My Girl" with $4.2 million. Thus can you blame me for predicting that this movie was going to open closer to the $1.3 million of the September 2016 film "Hillsong - Let Hope Rise," a fellow musically-themed Christian movie? You can imagine my surprise when it pulled that number on Thursday night previews alone and wound up with $17.1 million opening weekend. I would've thought "Paul, Apostle of Christ" would be the one to do those numbers, yet that one did the more traditional $5.2 million opening. With Easter coming this Sunday, I have now seen both of these films so that I could give a proper recommendation as to which one is worth seeing. While it's not always the best idea to simply follow the box office numbers, in this case it would be a wise choice.

I've always loved the song "I Can Only Imagine" by the band MercyMe. They played it all over the radio here in Utah for quite a long time. I thought for a while that it was just a Utah thing to play the song on normal pop radio stations because it seems kinda strange for a Christian rock song to get normal radio play. While I suppose Utah radio stations might have been a bit extra partial to the song, when I look up the chart numbers for it, this was definitely not just a Utah thing. "I Can Only Imagine" was obviously No. 1 on the Christian charts as it's the highest-selling Christian song ever, having been certified 3x platinum by the RIAA with 2.5 million copies sold and counting, adding 25,000 sales this week, thanks to this movie, according to kworb.net. In addition to being No. 1 on the Christian charts, it peaked at No. 5 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart, No. 27 on the U.S. Adult Top 40, No. 33 on U.S. Mainstream and No. 71 on the U.S. Hot 100. So yeah, this song has been quite the phenomenon, impacting millions of people worldwide for nearly 20 years since its initial release in 1999 and huge push as a single in the early 2000's. Again, thanks to the movie's success, the song has returned to No. 1 on the Christian charts this week, which I find impressive.

The lyrics to the song are quite simple when it comes to Christian doctrine. Bart Millard, lead singer of MercyMe, says in the song, "I can only imagine what it will be like when I walk by your side. I can only imagine what my eyes will see when your face is before me. Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you, Jesus, or in awe of you be still? Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing hallelujah? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine when that day comes and I find myself standing int he sun. I can only imagine when all I will do is forever worship you. I can only imagine." So yeah, nothing super unique when it comes to Christian music in general, but what really sells the song is how much passion there is behind the song. Just by listening to the song, you can tell that Bart was really impacted by Christianity in his life. What he's saying in the song is nothing superficial or nothing he's been trained to say his whole life. You can tell that he's speaking from soul when he is imagining what it will be like to leave this life and enter the presence of God. I personally imagine that a desire to be seen as true and faithful in the eyes of God when that moment comes motives him to live good in this life.

Yeah, sure, finding the equal amount of passion in the music itself certainly helps as the balance between the piano, strings and drums brings a lot of energy and feeling to the song. But I'm not necessarily here to review the song itself, but I feel it's important for you to get my personal take on this song because that's important to my view of this movie. I will admit that when I watched the trailers, I was definitely intrigued, but just because a song is good, doesn't mean the movie behind the making of the song will be good. As it turns out, though, there's definitely a reason why this song has so much power and soul behind it and that's because Bart's story is an incredible one. I could tell just by listening to the song that he had a story worth telling that led him to write the song and I'm glad a team of filmmakers found his story and decided to tell it because, just like this song has inspired millions, I honestly think this movie can inspire millions. There's a strong message here about love and forgiveness stemming from the complex relationship Bart had with his father. As Bart says, his father was a monster. He had a bad temper and when something upset him, he took it out on Bart and his mother, causing his mother to leave them, leaving Bart alone with his abusive dad.

When it comes to Christian movies, I actually get quite picky with them. Granted, I'm not as picky as some mainstream critics, but I prefer there to be a balance between a good spiritual message and a good cinematic experience. Bad acting, bad story and poorly written characters can ruin a Christian movie even if the movie's heart is in the right place. Then we have movies like the "God's Not Dead" franchise that are straight-up off-putting by painting Christians and non-Christians in a bad light. Or we have the curious case of the Kendrick Brothers' films such as "Fireproof," "Facing the Giants," "Flywheel" and "War Room" that are so black and white with their preaching and unrealistic with their storytelling that I think they do more bad than good because you simply can't relate to their unbelievability. If life is going poorly, it's because you're not following God and the second you start following God, everything is going to perfectly fall into place. Your football team will start winning, your car business will be successful and your cheating husband will immediately get nauseous. NO! That's not realistic to life. It's damaging to say that because if a non-believer tests that theory and life still sucks, he or she might conclude that it's all fake.

That's why I really love it when I find a movie like "I Can Only Imagine" that hits all the right notes. This is not a superficial movie about life going awful for father and son only to magically get better when they find God and have life perfectly turn out for them. This is a story about a father who has been abusive to this kid his whole life, so when Bart is old enough, he high-tails it out of there to live his dream, something his father constantly told him not to do because it's not going to pay the bills. Thus when Bart is out living his dream, thinking everything is going to work out nicely, he gets a rude awakening when professional people from record labels tell him that he's not going to make it, thus giving him the thought that maybe his mean dad was right the whole time. But his manager that has been going along with him sees something in him, but sees that he's scared of bringing it out and that stems from this broken relationship between father and son. So Bart makes the decision that he needs to go figure this out. Face his father. Yet the second you think the movie is going to turn out like every other Christian movie with both of them seeing God and magically living happily ever after, it doesn't. There's some genuine, intense drama.

Obviously we know that things eventually work out because, spoiler alert, Bart Millard broke out in a huge way with this song he wrote. But the power here is not in some crazy, twist ending. It's in the journey that leads to this ending. The drama in this movie is real. This father/son relationship is something that I think a lot of people can relate to and learn from. Instead of having this miraculous turnaround, what if you've been living this horrible life, find God, and think that your son is going to accept you and you can move forward like nothing happened, only to witness your son walk in and bluntly tell you that he can't forgive you because of the stuff that you did to him? Or what if you are in Bart's shoes? Is it easy to walk home and instantly forgive someone who has treated you so badly for so many years, just because it appears that they have changed? No, it's not. It would be unrealistic to expect anyone to instantly forgive an abuser because there's years of built up pain that's sometimes impossible to just let go. While some Christian movies like "War Room" or "God's Not Dead" left realism on the chopping block in favor of their superficial message, I loved "I Can Only Imagine" because it had the courage to be real and thus is the far more inspiring film.

Listen, I'm not going to spoil the specifics of how this all turns out, but there's a powerful message in this movie that really hit me hard. If I'm being a bit critical, it did take a while for the movie to get there. Sometimes life doesn't fit perfectly into a three-act movie structure and it's a tricky balance to know how exactly to turn someone's life into a movie. This movie doesn't always find that balance as it's overly long in certain places. But if you're patient with it, everything ties together quite beautifully and it's that third act of this movie that hits this home. I might forget in due time that the first two acts were sometimes overly long, but I don't think I'll ever forget how inspiring the final act of this movie was. I have to give a lot of credit to Bart's story being an inspiring one, but without the performances of J. Michael Finley as Bart and Dennis Quaid as Bart's dad, this wouldn't have worked. Those two sold this movie and made Bart's story work out perfectly on the big screen. And now when I listen to the song "I Can Only Imagine," I'm going to think of the story behind it and how Bart dedicated the song to his father and that's going to make the song mean even more. Thus if you're looking for an inspirational film this Easter, this movie is the one to check out. I'm going to award it a 9/10.