As if his work with Applebee’s wasn’t targeted enough toward a desperate Middle America willing to scarf up whatever insipid trash was pitched at them, now John Corbett is in an inspirational Christian film. He’s the star of All Saints, a religious film that, like so many, is based on the true story that gave someone a blessed book deal.
Directed by Steve Gomer, whose latest theatrical feature was Barney’s Great Adventure, the movie is basically Field of Dreams by way of a Christ-approved, modern-day slave plantation. Corbett plays Michael Spurlock, a salesman-turned-pastor brought on to close a sparsely-attended church. (Why is a new pastor brought in just to shutter the place? That’s a secret between the full film and God, apparently.) But when a group of Burmese refugee farmers join his congregation, Spurlock gets an idea through a hackneyed scene of rain-drenched, Godly intervention: what if he turns the church’s surrounding land into a farm run for free by his flock, using the profits to keep his parish afloat? What a miracle that would be! Though, really, the miracle of keeping afloat here is more that Corbett somehow still has his head just above the Hallmark Channel Original waterline.
All Saints arrives in theaters August 25.
