THE GOLDEN LAWS
As Previously, Within are my thoughts during the course of the film, so you may read, laugh, or avoid them at your pleasure.
This movie was dumb. Seriously dumb. As someone who considers himself extremely hesitant to mock the religious beliefs of others, this was a dumb, dumb movie.
And you know what? It wasn't because it hilariously glossed over Jesus, made all kinds of Shin Mazinger Z claims about pre-Greek history, or because it had a guy basically flirting with his descendant for two hours. All of that was appalling, yes, let there be no mistake, but that wasn't really what makes
The Golden Laws the worst Happy Science film I've seen.
The Laws of Eternity was boring, and the Rebirth of Buddha was a significant improvement over it. Unfortunately, it seems that what they took away from the focus groups there was "Less blah blah blah more alien invasions" meant "More blah blah blah but this time with TIME TRAVEL!"
Let's break it down, shall we?
There is no plot to this film. Not really. Satoru and his not-girlfriend-really-granddaughter hop in her hijacked time machine, accidentally cause HALF OF HISTORY, all the while avoiding all manner of historical things (no seriously did the Sphinx even exist in the days of Moses? That is some Aladdin level of nonsense.) but once the "plot" gets underway it's just . . . "Hey let's go to 21st Century Japan!" LOL NO HERE IS ANOTHER HISTORICAL MOMENT INSTEAD. And that's it. For 2 hours. That's it. Which leads us into the next complaint I have to make.
You can only have so many spiritually moving moments accompanied by majestic orchestral pieces in a movie before eventually they stop having effect. Watch a movie about the miracles of Jesus. You'll notice they give you some breathing room. They give you scenes of Christ teaching. It's not just miracle miracle miracle miracle. Significant amounts of time are spent building you up for the Crucifixion so you know it is a big deal and not just another in a long, long line of miracles.
I mean seriously, 2000ish years ago the guys writing the Gospels knew to fucking
build you to that moment. That isn't the case in this movie. I was constantly bombarded with amazing miraculous moments and stirring speeches about the sugar-coated, non-denominational love of God. "See God part the Red Sea for Moses! See Buddha calm a rampaging Elephant without blinking! See Hermes beat the first level of God of War! See Hermes beat the last level of God of War 3! See God in the stream of time. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY." And that goddamn moving music blaring nonstop gets old after awhile. It's enough to make even the deepest of believers question why the all loving God won't shut the eternal cacophony of horrible, washed up English voice actors and most-generic moving spiritual music the Hell up.
There is no development to the cast this time around. I mean do we really expect two teenagers who are on a joyride to have much development? I suppose not, but some would be nice. The closest we get to it is that moron girl learns the definition of "awesome" (opening up a proverbial Pandora's Box of questions about how language works when she needs to use a translator to translate modern Japanese but not to speak to a kid from 500 years in her past, and how his notepad, in spite of being 500 years older than her time machine, is fully interfaceable with it.) And also that Ash Ketchum decides he wants to be a religious leader . . . which is preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty obvious he wants to do anyway. I guess he overcomes his doubts, but they're never, ever elucidated, ever.
The nearest things we get to references to older works in this movie are the endless talk of King Hermes who was the physical incarnation of God (begging no end of questions as to what was meant by "Queen Aphrodite is a Goddess" and furthermore
of all the Gods, why did they choose to further deify HERMES?" And is he with Aphrodite because of Cupid? What's the deal there? Cuz normally Haephestus does not take kindly to dudes sleeping with his amorous wife.
Anyway, what else was their to cover? The CGI sucked, the characters continued to have the same ghastly pallor to their skin they've had since the first movie, there were racist caricatures and Jesus gets gipped so massively I really don't know why they bothered to include him. I mean how do you do the Crucifixion and Resurrection in like, less than 10 minutes? What, did you have somewhere to be?
The most laughable part though was that if I take this movie literally (which I have NO idea if I am meant to) it means that roughly 1/3 of all spiritual phenomona throughout human history can be attributed to two teenagers on a joyride in a stolen time machine.
That is some really, really out there doctrine.