Does ‘Heaven Is for Real’ have a prayer at the box office?

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 08 April 2014 | 18.18

Colton Burpo was not quite 4 years old in 2003 when his appendix burst and he lay unconscious in a hospital bed. When doctors told his parents Colton might not survive surgery, his mother, Sonja, phoned friends and asked them to pray. His father, Todd, found a small room, slammed the door and, with tears streaming down his face, started raging out loud at God.

"You're going to take my son?" he shouted.

Colton Burpo insists he went to heaven during a brush with death 10 years ago.Photo: Donna Svennevik/Disney

Against the odds, Colton pulled through and was out of the hospital in just a few days. But the shocking part came months later, when the family drove past the hospital. Colton remembered being there, but also added details: angels singing to him to keep him calm as he rose out of the bed, and seeing his dad praying and his mom on the phone.

In the ensuing months, he talked about leaving his body and visiting heaven. He told his parents he sat on Jesus' lap and met family members who were long dead before he was born.

Todd, a pastor in the small town of Imperial, Neb., told the story of his son's claim to have visited heaven in the best-selling 2010 book, "Heaven Is for Real." And a movie adaptation, starring Greg Kinnear as Todd, is out on April 16, a few days before Easter.

Director Randall Wallace, who wrote big-budget flicks "Braveheart" and "Pearl Harbor" and directed "Secretariat," is hoping "Heaven Is for Real" (produced by mega-church pastor T.D. Jakes) will appeal not just to its natural religious constituency but to secular audiences as well.

"I love the uniqueness of this story," says Wallace, whose parents founded a church in rural Tennessee and who later started his own ecumenical church in his home. "I told [the Burpos] it reminded me of 'Field of Dreams' and 'The Sixth Sense,' two movies I consider great."

In the film, Todd, his wife Sonja and older daughter Cassie are faced with stigma from townsfolk who hesitate to believe Colton's story of visiting the afterlife, testing both their faith and community bonds.

Colton, now a 14-year-old high school freshman, says he still has vivid memories of the visit to heaven.

Two things grabbed his parents' attention the most: When he said he met his other sister — Sonja miscarried a girl a year before Colton was born — and when he described meeting his great-grandfather, whom he later identified in an old photo.

Critics point out that Colton was never actually clinically dead on the operating table. And skeptics will roll their eyes at Colton's descriptions of heaven, which, with rainbow horses and winged angels, resonate like a toddler's storybook version.

But Wallace says he wanted to tell a family's story, not make religious propaganda.

"It was crucial that I had doubts about Colton's story," he says. "If someone is trying to convince me of a dogma, I'm not interested. If someone is recounting an authentic experience, I'm fascinated."

Todd says the family tries to focus on the people the story has helped, not the doubters.

"Colton probably has the best attitude: 'You can believe what you want to, but I know what I saw,' " Todd says of his son's response to naysayers.

The family stands behind the movie as a faithful version of their experiences. But like any Hollywood story, it couldn't capture everything.

"How they portray heaven in the movie, heaven is just so much better than that," Colton says. "They do a good job, but they haven't experienced it like I have."


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