The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2017)

My Review

“The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” is a faith-based comedy-drama movie telling the story of a former child star whose partying ways catch up to him and he is sentenced to do 200 hours of community service at a Chicago-area megachurch. Things get complicated when out-of-work Gavin discovers that the church is putting on an Easter pageant, and he pretends to be a Christian just to get the role of Jesus.

Director Dallas Jenkins (“Once We Were Slaves” 2014) kept this picture on track from a lucid screenplay by Andrea Gyertson Nasfell. The cast was more than engaging including Brett Dalton as Gavin, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes as director of the play, Neil Flynn as Gavin’s father, Shawn Michaels and Christopher Maleki as church members, and D. B. Sweeney as Pastor Richardson. The watchable “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” was a box office disappointment for Vertical Church Films, Walden Media, WWE Studios, and Blumhouse Productions. It was filmed in Elgin and Geneva, suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.