To many, this movie will seem blasphemous, but I think God has a sense of humor. After all, he appeared as a George Burns impersonator in that movie about himself back in 1977, a wonderful story actually that everyone should take a look at.
I thought this picture had pretty good potential starting out, particularly with those Laws of Universal Annoyance that the script writers came up with. Like #2129, the phone will ring whenever you get in the bathtub. But then, and perhaps because this was a European picture where they take religion even less seriously than we do here, the film starts hitting on all the liberal points of view as they regard one's personal view of God and relationship with the Almighty.
For one, the God (Benoit Poelvoorde) in this picture is a reprobate, swilling beer and generally making a nuisance of himself to his family and the rest of the world with those annoying laws of his. The apostles God's daughter Ea (Pili Groyne) selects are an assortment of random misfits, which include a killer, a sex maniac, a woman (Catherine Deneuve) who established a bestial relationship with a gorilla, and a ten year old boy who wants to be a girl. Yup, just the sort of role models one would seek out if attempting to save one's soul from the hell fires of damnation.
The one concept the story did a fairly decent job with had to do with Ea's release of the dates God had on file for when everyone in the world was going to die. In a less than absurdist film, this idea could have really been explored without the farcical elements like that guy Kevin (Gaspard Pauwels), who apparently didn't get the download that all bets were off after Mrs. God inadvertently rebooted the computer. That everyone's life would undergo some significant change if one's death could truly be known is a given, so I would have appreciated a less cynical approach. Personally, I'd like to think I was going to live forever, and in the meantime, so far, so good.
I thought this picture had pretty good potential starting out, particularly with those Laws of Universal Annoyance that the script writers came up with. Like #2129, the phone will ring whenever you get in the bathtub. But then, and perhaps because this was a European picture where they take religion even less seriously than we do here, the film starts hitting on all the liberal points of view as they regard one's personal view of God and relationship with the Almighty.
For one, the God (Benoit Poelvoorde) in this picture is a reprobate, swilling beer and generally making a nuisance of himself to his family and the rest of the world with those annoying laws of his. The apostles God's daughter Ea (Pili Groyne) selects are an assortment of random misfits, which include a killer, a sex maniac, a woman (Catherine Deneuve) who established a bestial relationship with a gorilla, and a ten year old boy who wants to be a girl. Yup, just the sort of role models one would seek out if attempting to save one's soul from the hell fires of damnation.
The one concept the story did a fairly decent job with had to do with Ea's release of the dates God had on file for when everyone in the world was going to die. In a less than absurdist film, this idea could have really been explored without the farcical elements like that guy Kevin (Gaspard Pauwels), who apparently didn't get the download that all bets were off after Mrs. God inadvertently rebooted the computer. That everyone's life would undergo some significant change if one's death could truly be known is a given, so I would have appreciated a less cynical approach. Personally, I'd like to think I was going to live forever, and in the meantime, so far, so good.