DEAR GOD
DEAR GOD is about people who write letters to God, which in our disciplined society end up in bins in the “dead letter” division at the post office, along with letters to Elvis, the Tooth Fairy, alien civilizations and others. It’s not a matter of belief or disbelief; the mail is just (for now) undeliverable.
More precisely, this Garry Marshall-directed comedy is about some fictional characters who work in this office in L.A. They decide to make their lives more interesting and useful by answering the pleas for help sent to God. Well, not all of them, but a few can be answered, like helping a sick child, saving a suicidal man from drowning, cleaning up the flat of a maid who spends her day cleaning other people’s houses.
The idea is pure grace and occurs to the improbable hero, a small-time scam artist (Greg Kinnear) who’s working as a postal clerk only to avoid going to jail. The dead-letter setting is both real and an apt metaphor, because the workers are a collection of comic oddballs who are in many ways as hopelessly lost as the mail.
What Marshall has in mind is a new Christmas-season parable, a sort of Miracle on 34th Street for the 1990’s. The do gooding hero is taken to court for “opening God’s mail without authorization.” Among his helpers are Laurie Metcalf as a burned-out lawyer and Tim Conway as a defrocked but dedicated mailman who lost his cool and bit a dog.
It’s silly but the very talented cast (add Hector Elizondo, Roscoe Lee Browne, Rue McLanahan and Jack Klugman) make it entertaining and benign. All in all, eight or so “miracles” occur, and while most are on the level of Boy Scout good deeds, frequent use of religious scenes and characters provides grounding and underlines the deeper potential for good in everyday life. Solid seasonal comedy, satisfactory for youth and adults.
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