The fact that they made a Christian movie about him is really quite strange. If you want to see a movie closer to the main character, watch Bill Paxton in the classic Weird Science. That being said, I have not seen the actual movie. My old high school friend just recently told me that they actually made a Christian movie about this guy, and I had to see it to believe it.

You can go the breathless, creepy-weepie route. Or you can go the determined, stiff-upper-lip route. The 5th Quarter chose creepy-weepie, and as always, it really doesn't work very well. I don't have a problem with faith-based content, but that shouldn't prevent it from being well-written, well-acted and well-produced. The 5th Quarter, sadly, is not. The characters are very one-dimensional. The film should have explored the personal effect the tragedy forced upon them and how they dealt with that. It's all well and good to portray people turning to their faith in times of great stress. However, The 5th Quarter shows characters turning to faith and expecting it to do the work. We need to see how faith was the inspiration and one's resources were the effort. The writing was uninspired -- many, many clichés. As always in low budget productions, much of the talent was picked up locally, and it shows. Lines were often delivered without any credibility; the actors' inexperience was obvious. Production values were very erratic - sometimes quite good, other times amateurish. (The use of stock footage was particularly jarring - roughly edited and badly printed. It often looked like a bad 60s kinescope, and perhaps it was.) The acting in general was not remarkable. Both Aiden Quinn and Andie McDowell are capable of excellent work; not here. Quinn chewed up the scenery. (He tends to do that in highly emotional roles; the director should have reined him in. Of course, the director may have actually liked it.) Andie McDowell could have phoned it in. Ryan Merriman - still very underrated and underused, as is often the fate of talented child actors who grow up - did quite well making some impossible lines and set-ups sound believable. All in all, this film could have been first rate. The story, the principal cast, the values - they had all the elements of an exciting, inspiring film. But it fell prey to the problem with so many faith-based films - the story was sacrificed to make sure we got the message. As a result, neither succeeded all that well.

Terribly written and directed. Terrible musical interludes in nearly every sequence. Preachy commercials about organ donation and the perils of reckless driving. It's too bad because the film could have been really great. There's a great cast. Films can have a faith-based message without being so heavy-handed, without all the bible thumping and scripture quoting.The idea of a good family coping with the senseless death of a teen-aged son is really a good idea--and one that already won the Oscar for best picture (Ordinary People directed by Robert Redford).This movie may have a slight life on the Netflix circuit--but it looks like it will lose about $5 million dollars. I've had a better film on my teeth.

I must say that when renting direct-to-DVD movies, I never do expect anything great (this is not to say that I've never been pleasantly surprised by one in the past). I always make sure to watch these sorts of movies with an open mind and lowered standards.Sadly, I wish this movie could meet even my lowest of standards. Firstly, the acting was terrible (at best). All actors seemed to have been hired straight out of some sort of cheaply made orange juice commercial. The overall stiffness and completely off emotional queues were the only things of this movie ever coming close to making me cry. However, the most blatant offender in this film was Aidan Quinn's pathetically over-acted performance. Secondly, you cannot expect anything even remotely fresh out of this film. Nothing original; no artistic value: Classic "Going-through- turmoil-but-in-the-end-we'll-all-be-alright" Hollywood monotony. There is literally NOTHING special.Thirdly, they slap the "Based on a True Story" sticker to boot. It's basically a way to make you WANT to sort of like the movie, but really it only made me hate it even more. How dare they defile whoever's story this was based off of with this steaming pile of garbage of a "movie".Simply put: This was deplorable. A truly, truly horrendous movie.