90 Minutes in Heaven is 121 minutes long and I don't think I could call any of that time heaven. This is the story of a man named Don Piper who claimed to have spent an hour and a half in heaven after being declared dead in a car accident in January of 1989. It's a fantastic story and whether you believe it or not a movie about a man going to heaven and back should not be boring, unfortunately this one is. It's a very clinical, surprisingly unemotional movie. Don had to spend months in the hospital after his accident and a lot of this movie is about that time, I would say too much of it. I know something of the strains and stresses of a prolonged hospital stay, and while a lot of that stuff in the film felt true to me, it cinematic potential is limited. Not a lot of time is spent with the actual Heaven experience, and it is rendered very gauzily, it intrigues but never really delivers on the promise of awe.
It can be interesting to see who ends up in these Christian films, Kate Bosworth is in this as Eve Piper, Don's wife, Ms. Bosworth is married to the movies director Michael Polish of the 'The Polish Brothers' (lower rent Coen's) , the only film of there's I had seen was Northfork from 2003, which actually shares with this film religious themes and a muted tone, though it is a better movie. Hayden Christensen plays Don Piper, he's a better actor then he gets credit for, I could believe him in this, he plays a guy I suspect is nothing like Hayden Christensen, but I could buy him as a late 80's Baptist preacher and family man. There is a scattering of moments that work here but on the whole its a bore, at times oppressively so. *1/2
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