Miracles from Heaven Movie Review

Reviewed by Lynn Barker on Mar 16, 2016

Rating:

Kidzworld saw the inspirational film Miracles from Heaven. Will it inspire you? Read our movie review.

By: Lynn Barker

Miracles from Heaven asks you to imagine this: You are 10 years old but your body suddenly can’t digest anything. There is massive pain and your tummy bloats up like a pregnant woman’s. There is constant misdiagnosis, needles, tubes, blood drawing. No known cure exists. It would take a miracle to make this go away. What if you got one?

Jennifer Garner on set with the real Christy and AnnaCourtesy of Sony Picutres

Mommy, It Hurts!

Young Anna Beam (Kylie Rogers) wakes up vomiting and in great pain. Her mom Christy (Jennifer Garner) and dad Kevin (Martin Henderson) rush her to the hospital but the locals just think acid reflux or bad indigestion and send her home….several times. It gets worse.

Mother and daughter deal with pain together

A Better Diagnosis

Since Kevin has just mortgaged the house in order to expand his large animal vet practice, the family has little money to spend on medical expenses. Finally, a doctor diagnoses that Anna has “pseudo-obstruction motility disorder” (a rare intestinal disease) and “antral hypo motility disorder” (a stomach paralysis). The only doc who might help her is overloaded with patients and is in Boston…far away. When Christy can’t get Anna in to see him, she won’t take “no” for an answer but is starting to lose her strong Christian faith as Anna’s pain gets worse. She’ll take Anna to Boston.

Goodbyes before going to Boston

On to Boston

In Boston, after Christy and Anna meet a wonderfully kind waitress named Angela (Queen Latifah) who shows them around, taking Anna’s mind off her pain, Christy continually begs for Dr. Nurko (Eugenio Derbez) and his staff to take Anna as a patient. Finally, she is taken on. There are new drugs but they are expensive. Dad sells his motorcycle and works longer hours. Still in enormous pain, Anna just wants to die and go home to Jesus. Christy loses her faith.

Anna's silly doctor cracks everyone up

Returning Home

The new drugs work well enough for Anna to go home but she is far from cured. Trying to behave normally, she climbs a huge hollow tree in the yard and falls, head first inside the tree to the bottom, knocking herself unconscious. Anna lives but what happened to her while she was out? Will her disease get worse, better or has there been a miracle? Will the family remain faith-based?

Anna and her sister before Anna's fallCourtesy of Sony Picutres

Miracles From Heaven Trailer

Wrapping Up

Whether we are religious or not, Miracles from Heaven shows us the value of everyday, small miracles; the daily kindness of strangers that does wonders in our lives. The movie also focuses on family unity in crisis. It’s that family bond that pulls us through the worst of times.

The family in happy times

Whether you believe that what happens to Anna is a God-sent miracle or a strange, medical fluke keyed to her fall from a tree, you can rejoice for the Beam family and for a little girl, often in horrible pain, given another chance.

Christy prays that daughter Anna has survived her fall

The movie is well-acted especially by Jennifer Garner, young Kylie Rogers as Anna and Queen Latifah as a kind and loving stranger. Martin Henderson doesn’t have a lot to do but is a convincing, hard-working dad and Eugenio Derbez is great as a very funny doctor whose humor keeps his young patients from despair.

Seeing Boston with new friend Angela

Miracles from Heaven is a basic story in many ways… tight-knit family with a child in crisis, running out of money etc. Not that much is all that new. Some tweens and teens might think it is a bit long or that parts are boring but the love and hope that the film creates makes it worth at least 3 stars. A good family outing.