Charly

Yes, the acting is a little slow to start. Yes, the male lead doesn't seem to have the finer points of his character fleshed out for the first quarter (or half) of the movie. Yes, this is a movie about people of the Mormon faith. I am not Mormon and when the lead started trying to lead Charly to his faith I panicked a little and almost turned it off. I stuck with it though. I am Christian, though I am not sure if Mormonism is considered Christian, but I sometimes even find overtly Evangelical movies too pushy, especially when the storyline takes a back seat. I thought this movie dealt with faith as a real part of the characters' lives and while personally I find no rational reason for Charly to have accepted the Mormonism, I can understand she was trying to fill a void. The truths in the second part of the movie, regarding death and God's plan vs. our plan however, were well played and theologically could have spanned many Christian faiths and was (mild spoiler alert) more useful than a canned God grants miracles to all good people who truly believe, YAY happy ending.All in all the characters and their interpersonal story drove the movie enough that I could enjoy it for what it was--a story about two people trying to handle what life put in their paths to the best of their ability in a thoughtful and candid manner.I've come to learn the descriptions are short and you're going to get surprised sometime. However, this was way better than the rom-com turned "assisted suicide is the new heaven" movie I got tricked into.

I am a Roman Catholic for my entire life so this being a Mormon based love story was new to me. However, any movie that promotes love and understanding and faith is ok by me. The movie points out that faith and love brought the female lead to a better understanding of herself and that her love who was the male lead found his faith enhanced by his new love. Nice theme for a movie. Even the supporting male role was used to point out that graciousness and goodness can happen even when the one you love changes and loves someone else. In many ways, it’s a profound movie.

First off stop reading if you are Mormon. If you're Christian, read on. I absolutely adored the love story. The man was completely a man child and nieve (misspelling sorry), to think after you become saved, you never had a past life. But they needed this scene to allow the story to flow. If this movie was actually about Christianity and not a cult belief I would have loved it. She's seen reading the bible and later tells Utah, I've been reading the book of Mormon. The Holy bible is not the book of Mormon. The book of Mormon takes away and adds to the bible. They must completely skip over that in the bible. Not to add or take away from the Holy bible. I guess since they made a different book they think it doesn't apply to that. And the belief that you are with your marriage partner after death. We are brother and sisters in heaven and those urges are not with us. They have very strange beliefs that completely ignore the Holy word of God. But I kept replacing the Mormon word with Christianity and I could enjoy the story. It's very sad though. Bittersweet. So if you need happy, pass this up for a different day. God Bless all.

A beautiful love story!

I've lost several close people to cancer, and what you rediscover is that life is essentially a struggle for survival. I say rediscover because that's pretty much the basic programming that we're all born with. But, if you were raised with religious convictions, then you're told that there's a reason for everything that you don't understand, which is religion's way of saying "Let me make you feel better, and I'll take credit for it, even though there's nothing religion can really do for you."At best, when confronted with someone who is dying of cancer or some other terminal illness, is to make them comfortable and keep them in good spirits. I don't mean smiling or jovial, though that might be a good medicine in and of itself, but hopefully get them to realize that they did lead a productive or gratifying life, regardless of what anyone else or any group (religion and non alike) says about them.This film takes the religious view point that a god (presumably the Christian deity) has a "master plan" for everyone, and that cancer killing an individual is part of that grand scheme. Well, if you believe that, then that's your business. But the truth is that we know the causes of cancer, but have had a hard time getting the human body to respond to mutant runaway cells. But this movie says and tries to sell the viewer that the pain and anguish all suffer when a love one is lost is some connection to the Christian deity.Again, if that's your viewpoint, as is this film's, then that's your business. But again the hard truth is that cancer sprouts up due to cancer cells, already in every living creature's body, being activated by some chemical process. Said cells then take the runaway programming and reproduce without the usual regulation of the body's own biochemical clean up crew and safe guards.But you don't get any of that in this film. In fact, what you get is a very male-female tension and male-favoritism of the faith argument. The woman says no, but the male says yes, and in the end the male has his emotional needs met while his wife dies. That's not much of a film to me.You might argue that this is a faith neutral film, but given the ending I think it's safe to say that it's more of an attempt to keep faith alive by acknowledging the doubting of faith when tragedy comes to the home, but that faith can still be there in spite of all of the hard science and realities of the state of medicine and medical science as a whole.The film itself is technically competent, but that doesn't make the case for the argument, nor does it really validate anything oriented towards religion in spite of its attempt to sympathize with the doubter. And to my perspective, it's a male confirmation bias film regarding the very patriarchal Christian zeitgeist as a whole. That is to say the church is still a male dominated institution, has philosophies that confirm male power over females, and justifies atrocities by way of Christian mythology. And yes, it is mythology just as what we call the Greek myths, because the ancient Greeks believed in their stories as well.But that's getting far afield from the film. I've yet to see a non-religious film dealing with the cessation of life. Occasionally you see one on television throughout the years, or a major feature film that has dying as a theme, but you never see a smart one dealing with the hard realities of life. Which again, if you really examine this film, you might conclude that the male lead is delusional, has his delusions satisfied, while the realist, the woman, essentially succumbs to the hard realities that cancer is a very difficult condition to defeat or reverse.However, I doubt that such objectiveness is some clever tactic here on the part of the filmmakers, and that the film is religious in nature. As such, and as an atheist, all I can say is that you might want to see this once time out of academic curiosity. But don't be surprised if you find yourself leaving the film a bit sick to the stomach at the end of it.