Letters to God an Mother's Little Helpers

Film: Letters to God
Writer and Director: David Nixon
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Company: American Cinema International
Cast: Jeffrey Johnson, Maree Cheetham, Michael Christopher Bolten, Robyn Lively, Tanner Maguire

Dear God,
I know you have good intentions with this film. Tyler, played by Tanner Maguire, struggles with his cancer and the mailman Brady, played by Jeffrey Johnson, battles his alcoholism every day. But unfortunately, with the ever-so-cliché characters and cheesy-beyond-belief dialogue, Letters to God took a gamble and lost.
To better explain myself, I have developed a list of Ten Commandments that explore the ingredients of this film and why it may be stuck in purgatory for eternity.
1. Thou shall not cast the protagonist as a small child with cancer.
Cancer is sad, I will admit. But directors play the sympathy card far too often with films today. As soon as the main character, Tyler, appears on the screen bald and full of chemo, I couldn’t help but sigh and think to myself that this was going to be another sob story about a child with cancer. See: My Sister’s Keeper.
2. Thou shall not wipe tears from a face when they don’t exist.
If you are going to make the cheesiest movie possible, and the budget is limited, save money on some eye drops and hire actors that can actually squirt some tears. The child already has cancer and everyone wants to express sadness about it but no one can cry. That creates a very difficult task of conveying the emotions when they have none.
3. Thou shall consider the reality of teen angst.
So the small child has cancer and the brother is jealous of all the attention he gets but he keeps letting that emotion build up and using the excuse that he is just sad for Tyler. Not only is Tyler hogging the attention of all the local residents, but also he is now writing letters to God to pray and ask questions about his existence. Sounds like there’s a lot of Daddy issues going on in the family. Meanwhile, we don’t even find out until later that their Dad in the film has actually been dead for several years. So the brother is jealous and flips out on the mother, but she never even considers his hormones and all of the teen anxiety he could be having. She seems to be the one that needs to learn some compassion.
4. Thou shall remain consistent in choice of target audience.
Surprise! There’s a subplot. The new mailman has been drunk for about fifteen years and he just now decided that he was going to get real with his life and the post office has assigned him to Tyler’s house. He sees that Tyler has been writing letters to God, and doesn’t know what to do with them so he keeps them. Pretty logical. If you’re a drunk man.
5. Thou shall invest more than five dollars into the set design.
I would like to think that Tyler lives in real house. Just a thought when it comes to movies, but it usually works better when the scenery and such is actually realistic. The white picket fence with the generic dog and the token, but neighborly, minorities add nothing to this Jesus-freaked Pleasantville.
6. Thou shall not use the exact dialogue, “I’ll do what Jesus would do.”
Really? Tyler is eight years old. In all honesty, do you expect a child to ask their mom what they should do when the kids at school make fun of him and then say they’ll just do what Jesus would do? It may be idealistic for some, but the odds of that sentence leaving the mouth of a child seem farfetched.
7. Thou shall search for authenticity.
I want this movie to succeed, really. The message is great and I know that the creators have good intentions…but nothing seems real. The people, places, events, and even the letters to God from the entire community seem so far from reality that I feel like they should maybe get together with the creators of Full House and they can compromise.
8. Thou shall introduce and conclude subplots.
Apparently all the time the mailman has been spending with Tyler could have been spent with the family that he has. I guess he was too busy helping the pregnant neighbor get to the hospital to remember not to drink before he drove with his son in the car so now he can’t hang with him. Then, out of nowhere, the church leader comes along to bring Jesus into the hearts of the characters, but Tyler has been busy doing that all along. He got everyone to write letters to God.
9. Thou shall not fire the guy in charge of the music.
Soundtrack is enjoyable. I didn’t hear any clapping on the tracks and everything seemed to key in at the right moment. If only they can find those tears…
10. Thou shall choose to make a documentary instead.
The film definitely would work as a documentary, as it is based off of true events. Cancer is a serious illness and the content issue of religion is important to consider when discussing the foundation that actually collects letters written to God. I would thoroughly enjoy learning about the real story instead of being taken aback by what comes of as an overly religious children’s drama.

Sincerely, Melanie







Film: Mothers Little Helpers
Writer and Director: K. Asher Levin
Runtime: 86 Minutes
Company: Stonebrook Entertainment
Producer: Jack Schuster, Danny, Roth, Asher Levin
Executive Producer: Mickey Gooch, Cyrus Ahanchian
Cast: Kyle Gallner, Sarah Hyland, Denise Richards, James Belushi, Rebecca Mader, Kathryn Morris, Maeve Quinlan, and Ryan Pinkston

Struggling to imagine anything in which Denise Richards stars would be of any value, I took it upon myself to examine the recent feature from Stonebrook entertainment in spite of my old habits. Once I began watching the film Mother’s Little Helpers, I realized that Richards would not have exert much effort for her role as an attractive and rich older woman, or “cougar”, that yearns to get involved with younger men despite her failed marriage. Granted, Richards hasn’t done anything worth watching, well, ever… I must say that this film caught me by surprise. The sundry cast, some familiar faces and some not, the peculiar storyline, and the cleverly constructed humor creates a pleasurable experience that caters to the perverse minds of a resilient generation of young adults.
Mother’s Little Helpers, written and directed by K. Asher Levin, tells the story of Sam, played by Kyle Gallner, who is a rebellious teenager headed to his next private high school after being kicked out of several others for various ridiculous circumstances. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when Sam’s mother’s career as a Playboy Playmate doesn’t last long enough to bring in sufficient funding for his education. So, after a random but convenient rendezvous with a cougar in a nearby hotel, Sam decides to take matters into his own hands. The cougar, played by Maeve Quinlan, leaves Sam with a check for five hundred dollars and his entrepreneurship skills kick into gear. What ensues is a haphazard system of hookups between private school playboys looking for some cash and rich older women, victims to distressing marriages that crave some loving.
The cast bestows an air of charming and captivating abnormality onto the screen. Appropriately, James Belushi, who starred in National Lampoon’s Animal House, is featured as the ex-roadie headmaster of Sam’s private school. The pot-smoking faculty member has a son, the school jock, played by his real-life son Robert Belushi, who is not afraid to pick on the new kid...shocker. The overrated bully is a little bit typical, but plays a vital role in beating up the protagonist later, of course. Television sitcom Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland, who stars as Courtney in the film, provides the audience with a completely different picture of a teenage girl than what one would normally see on the weekly program. In this film, her character is both loud-mouthed and trashy, which seems a bit strange coming from a puppy-eyed young lady that seems to have gone astray from an Old Navy commercial. Nonetheless, Hyland’s performance unites her character’s varied development as Sam’s love interest, the daughter of the headmaster, and sister to the school bully.
Ryan Pinkston, as seen on MTV’s Punk'd, provides added comic relief as the cliché best friend and wingman to Sam. His odd presence and blatantly obvious desperation to get laid is equivalent to that of Chris Marquette’s role as the best friend, Eli, in The Girl Next Door. The other males cast as part of what becomes their escort service are amusing and equally as awkward, but the main story stays centered with its focus on Gallner as Sam.
Various scenes contain the dynamic of a camera (obviously handheld) that appears to tremble slightly, but it seems rather symbolic to the teenage adolescents in their awkward proposition of their discreet escort service. Not only that, but I don’t believe that the editing process is quite finished. There are imprudent mistakes in the audio that distract from the content and the level of volume is, at times, inconsistent. Aside from these trivial, yet rookie, glitches in the audio and the slight indulgence in unnecessary nudity, this work of cinema provides an entertaining plotline with dynamic characters. It resembles the likeness of The Girl Next Door with a hint of Milk Money, and presents an enjoyable comedy that succeeds in presenting the ideas that people make mistakes and life goes on, but lacks it a sense of moralization. However, that fact in itself is fitting for the film. Life is a collection of events that may or may not turn out as we had hoped. People make choices, time goes on, and the only thing that anyone can do is just keep living and roll with the punches. That is exactly what the characters demonstrate, just not in a blatantly profound way.
James Belushi, although a bit more restrained, is a crucial character in that he provides an older, more experienced outlook on the situation and furthers the faint and abstract morality of the film. His attitude towards Sam is always one of compassion and concern, and I feel that although the film may address an extremely rare issue, the character of the headmaster is one that should be admired and not overlooked. He brings a resolution to the conclusion of the film after all of the crossed wires have been uncovered and the conflicts have fully exposed themselves to the characters, while remaining a mediator among the masses.
Mother’s Little Helpers is creative expression in a modern day society that no one can dismiss as average. Although it may not be for the whole family, the film’s alluring soundtrack, quirky actors, and twisted comedic brilliance create a film that at least the average cougar can appreciate.