Sister Aimee: The Aimee Semple McPherson Story (2006)

Bio-pic on the pioneering female evangelist, radio personalty, and Church of the Four Square Gospel founder. Mrs. McPherson’s personality and story have been minded before for use in fiction, she is the inspiration for the Barbara Stanwyck character in director Frank Capra’s early 30's film The Miracle Women, and her relationship with her third husband provides a good deal of the plot for Elmer Gantry. Here we have the story of the women’s real life, and it is inherently compelling and kind of complicated. This movie rendering however is severely handicapped by an embarrassingly small budget, the story of a women who preached to hundreds of thousands done here without a single crowed scene. With the exception of Rance of Howard in a fairly well done supporting part, none of the players are names, and their acting ability limited. This combined with costumes that might have been procured from Savers, and some scenes that may have been filmed in Church offices and peoples basements, distract from the story and periodically strains ones ability to buy that all of this is supposed to be happening between 1907 and 1944. In the end you feel like you’ve just seen something on par with a well done community theater production. I found myself throughout the viewing wishing that I was seeing this story (which really is engaging, and despite its cheap rendering here I can’t say that I was ever board) with respectable Hollywood production values. I even found myself casting this imagined remake, which should include the talents of Michelle Williams and Hugh Jackman. One’s ability to take this film depends on ones ability to stand its budget, and for the type of bare bones production it is it’s on of the few I could every stand to see again, which puts it above a lot of big budget Hollywood tripe. Being generous it’s a three, more realistically it’s a 1 ½ or a 2, so in the end I deem to give it a 2 ½ out of 5.