It’s 1950. You’re God. Fine, you slept through a recent global conflagration and the Holocaust, but now you’re rested and ready to perform a miracle or two. Show the faithful what you can do. Turn some water into wine or some such thing. Then an idea hits. You’ll take over the airwaves! The radio airwaves, kids, as only the rich had televisions. The people seem tired, confused. They live in fear pretty much 24/7. Not even the nation’s pot roasts are inspiring our menfolk. They bitch. A lot. Like all the time. And if you’re Joe Smith (James Whitmore), you whine endlessly about broken appliances, traffic laws, and the prick at work who insists you arrive on time. God has had enough.
When we first meet Joe, he’s grouchy. By the end, he’s still grouchy, only now there’s a new baby to ease the sorrow. Wait until someone tells him that means he’ll actually have less money at the end of the month. Before that blessed day, he’ll threaten to slug his wife’s aunt, drive drunk, and ignore his son completely, at least when he’s not yelling at him to get the fuck out of the way. Joe is a walking advertisement for post-war ennui, and it’s telling that even though God will be speaking to the entire world, it’s the Smith clan that receives the primary focus. Because if a white suburban father isn’t grateful, God is going to have to break his two-thousand-year reign of indifference to set things right. Or maybe he simply feels sorry for old Joe because he’s married to Nancy Reagan.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. We, along with the Smith clan, are going to gather around the radio and hear the booming voice of the Almighty as he inspires humanity. Maybe he’ll slip in a secret or two, like how to cure cancer or live to be 150. More than that, perhaps we’ll hear an apology, a tone of regret. After all, it wasn’t entirely necessary that he afflict babies with brain tumors or allow Japan to invade Nanking. This could be it. The big show. The way to explain everything, from gravity and black holes to the 15,700 species of ant. We settle in. Light a fire, just because. Even little Johnny gets a cup of cocoa. Then it begins. Oh. I see. We have some homework to do? We should count our blessings? Thanks, Big Guy, but I got similar shit from last night’s fortune cookie.
It’s one of the film’s big disappointments that we never actually get to hear God speak. The characters do, but who cares about them? That said, Joe misses half the broadcasts, as would anyone when GOD HIMSELF is talking to the world. He skips one night to go bowling, a second to get wasted and flirt with a bimbo. Joe only ever learns about what is said because his wife had the good sense to take notes. Only there’s not much to transcribe. Turns out God is kind of a bore. And a little silly. A world teetering on the edge of nuclear war, and you want us to smile a little more? That these six days (because, naturally, God rests on the seventh day) didn’t push the globe towards militant atheism is a miracle in itself. Perhaps Satan should have stopped by for a visit. Believe me, we’d have given him our full attention.
The best evidence anyone has for God’s non-existence is that whenever he appears in a book, song, or 1950’s B-movie, he’s reduced to a self-help guru, or some smarmy prick with a briefcase full of lectures instead of actual solutions. Though we don’t see or hear the sum-bitch, we hate him all the same. Hell, we’d have settled for him giving Joe a car that didn’t take forever and a day to start in the morning. For someone who demands absolute allegiance, he’s not exactly holding up his end of the bargain. And like God himself, the movie is all tease. Will we ultimately be saved? That might be dramatic enough to warrant a viewing. Instead, we get a Master of the Universe who refuses to speak to those behind the Iron Curtain. You read that right. God is not only a petty bitch, he’s a capitalist to boot.
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