Film Review: The Imposter

By Brian Hall

GENRE: DRAMA/MUSICAL
RATING: NOT RATED
STUDIO: PURE FLIX ENTERTAINMENT
RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 24, 2010
RATING: 1 OUT OF 5

Johnny C (Kevin Max) is the lead singer of Christian rocks hottest band, “Grand Design”. But he is harboring a secret, when he is off-stage (and even sometimes while on-stage) he uses drugs, alcohol, and women for no other reason than the fact the he feels he deserves to take advantage of “the pleasures in life”. Unfortunately, that synopsis that I just gave played out better than the majority of The Imposter did.

The movie makes it clear in its opening moments that it wants to avoid cliché with a voiceover by Max stating that most of your Christian movies turn out with the good guy walking down the church aisle, falling on his face, having a heart-to-heart with God, leaving the church, and then everything is just hunky-dory from there on out, and that this wasn’t that kind of movie. Well… they sure accomplished avoiding that cliché, but they ended up running into every other one out there in the process. While the script seems well developed, the execution of it was poor (and poor is an understatement). From the emotionless acting from supporting actors Kerry Livgren (of Kansas fame) and Jeff Deyo (whom I respect very much as a musician) to the struggle of two projects crashing into one another (I wasn’t sure if I was watching a movie, or a WOW Hits DVD from 2004) and the stereotypical homeless man (with a bug zapper named Oprah…?). There is even a scene in which two radio personalities report some news about the band, and it would appear they weren’t even asked to memorize their lines as they had scripts in hand and delivered their lines with more cheese than a box of Velveeta.

I went into this film with high hopes, but about fifteen minutes into the film, all hopes were banished and I was left annoyed and disappointed. Find the singers CD’s and enjoy, but skip out on The Imposter.

Review copy provided courtesy of Pure Flix Entertainment