‘Jesus got whacked, badda boom. Then the body disappeared.” That’s the Easter story in a nutshell according to pastor Vinny (Michael Franzese), a wiseguy turned man of the cloth. Pastor Vinny is a brief chink of humour in this speechy, preachy Christian-themed movie – to be filed in the subgenre of conversion dramas about militant atheists finding God. It’s produced by Fox News host Sean Hannity, and the director is Kevin “Hercules” Sorbo, who also stars as a sneering liberal intellectual frequently introduced on the lecture circuit as “the world’s most famous atheist”. He’s called Dr Sol Harkens (sounds a bit like Dawkins, no?).
An almighty whiff of phoniness hangs over proceedings – not least in Sorbo’s portrayal of Sol, who looks and behaves more like the dishy doctor in a daytime soap than a rock-star intellectual. His marriage to Kate (Sam Sorbo) has recently collapsed under the strain of losing their eight-year-old son to cancer. After the launch party for his latest God-bashing bestseller, Sol drunkenly drives his car into a wall. In the ambulance, clinically dead for four minutes, his dead son appears to him in a glowing tunnel full of memories – it looks like a giant digital photo frame. Naturally, Sol’s fans and the media are champing to know what he saw during his near-death experience. After a quick chat with his doctor – for an intellectual, he’s bizarrely incurious about the neurological explanations – Sol meets Pastor Vinny, embraces God and pours the vodka down the sink.
Everyone here emotes like they’re acting in an electric toothbrush ad. But in truth, Let There Be Light isn’t the most awful faith-based movie ever made. At the very least it has a consistency: as an atheist, Sol is a raging narcissist, as a Christian he believes God has chosen him to spread His message – like a second son.
