Movie Review: 'Oh, God!'

Oh, God! (1977)

Directed by: Carl Reiner

Written by: Larry Gelbart, based on the novel by Avery Corman

Starring: George Burns, John Denver, Teri Garr, Donald Pleasence, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Dinah Shore, Carl Reiner, Mario Machado, William Daniels, Titos Vandis, Barnard Hughes

God: The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. Before that, I think you have to go back to the Red Sea.

On October 7, 1977, Warner Bros. Pictures released director Carl Reiner's Oh, God!, a delightful and unexpectedly touching comedy starring George Burns as God and singer John Denver as a befuddled assistant supermarket manager chosen by the Almighty to deliver His message to a troubled, even skeptical humanity.

Adapted by Larry Gelbart from Avery Corman's eponymous 1971 novel, Oh, God! is, as the late Roger Ebert wrote in his contemporary review, a " sly, civilized, quietly funny speculation on what might happen if God endeavored to present himself in the flesh yet once again to forgetful Man."

Jerry Landers: Why me?

God: Why not you?

Jerry Landers: You mean there's no special...

God: Life is a crapshoot, like the millionth customer that crosses the bridge gets to shake hands with the governor. You thought I picked you because you're better than everyone?

Jerry Landers: I'm not?

God: You're better than some but not as good as others, but you crossed the bridge at the right time.

The plot of Oh, God! is simple: in late-1970s California, assistant supermarket manager Jerry Landers (John Denver) finds a letter in his mailbox summoning him to an interview with someone claiming to be God.

At first, Jerry - who is married to Bobbie (Teri Garr) and is a dad to pre-teen kids Adam (Moosie Drier) and Becky (Rachel Longaker) - is skeptical. He is a self-admitted non-believer, so his first reaction is that the letter is just a prank pulled off by his friend Artie. Bobbie agrees, and before the couple settles down for the night, Jerry tears the letter into shreds and tosses it into a trash can.

To the Landers' surprise, Jerry finds that the letter has somehow repaired itself. Still believing that Artie has pulled off a magnificent prank, Jerry ignores the summons for an interview, until his curiosity (and a persistent effort from the Almighty) finally gets piqued enough to go to the 27th Floor in a building that only has 17 stories.

Of course, Jerry discovers that this isn't a prank, and he is hornswoggled when the Creator reveals himself not as a talking special effect a la The Ten Commandments but as a Deity who wears a red plaid buttondown, a fishing cap, horn-rimmed glasses, and delivers one-liners like a veteran of vaudeville (George Burns).

At first, Jerry is not entirely convinced that the situation is real, but after God provides physical proof that can't be easily dismissed - such as a rain shower inside Jerry's car - the unbeliever from Southern California agrees to become a late 20th Century Moses and deliver the Lord's message to a skeptical audience.

© 1977 Warner Bros. Pictures

Jerry Landers: How can you permit all the suffering that goes on the world?

God: Ah, how can I permit the suffering?

Jerry Landers: Yeah!

God: I don't permit the suffering. You do! Free will. All the choices are yours.

Jerry Landers: Choices? What choices?

God: You can love each other, cherish and nurture each other or you can kill each other. Incidentally, "kill" is the word. It's not "waste." If I meant "waste" I would have written "thou shalt not waste." You're doing some very funny things with words, here. You're also turning the sky into mud. I look down, I can't believe the filth. Using the rivers for toilets, poisoning my fishes. You want a miracle? You make a fish from scratch. You can't. You think only God can make a tree? Try coming up with a mackerel. And when the last one is gone, that'll be that. Eighty-six on the fishes, goodbye sky, so long world, over and out.

My Take

Although Oh, God! could have been presented in a disrespectful, even insulting way that mocked religion and believers, Larry Gelbart (who is best known for his script for Tootsie and the television version of M*A*S*H) and Carl Reiner (The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid) give viewers a clever, touching, and genuinely funny movie. It's a message film, to be sure, and it pokes fun at people who, like televangelists Jim Bakker and Robert Tilton, pose as pious religious leaders whose main interests are TV ratings, wealth, and power. And yet, Oh, God! is a comedy that treats its subject with a light touch and, yes, affection and respect.

Although it is rumored that director Carl Reiner had originally hoped to cast his friend Mel Brooks in the title role, the casting of the legendary George Burns (who had won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in 1975's The Sunshine Boys) was a brilliant choice on the part of casting director Dianne Crittenden. After watching Oh, God! twice in one week, I can't imagine any other actor but Burns delivering the lines written for the Almighty by Larry Gelbart.

God: Why is it so hard for you to believe? Is my physical existence any more improbable than your own? What about all that hoo-ha with the devil awhile ago from that movie? Nobody had any problem believing that the devil took over and existed in a little girl. All she had to do was wet the rug, throw up some pea soup and everybody believed. The devil you could believe, but not God? I work in my own way. I don't, I don't get inside little children; they got enough to do just being themselves. Also, I'm not about to go around to every person in the world and say, 'Look it's me, I wanna talk to you.' So I picked one man. One very good man. I told him God lives. I live. He had trouble believing too, in the beginning. I understood. I'm not sure how this whole miracle business started, the idea that anything connected with me has to be a miracle. Personally, I'm sorry that it did. Makes the distance between us even greater. But if a miracle helps you believe that I am who I say I am... I'll give you one. A good one. Let me see? What's my most impressive miracle? Ah-ha! Pick a card!

Judge Baker: What?

God: Pick a card, any card.

George Burns, who was 81 when Oh, God! premiered in the fall of 1977 (earning the honor of being the only film to briefly knock Star Wars off the Number One spot at the box office during that film's long theatrical run), is delightful to watch as the Almighty. I love it when he explains to John Denver's befuddled Jerry Landers that even He makes mistakes (listing giraffes, avocado pits, and tobacco as the Top Three "fails" in His creation). It's a cleverly-written joke by Gelbart, but Burns' delivery of the line makes it work like, well, magic.

I was also impressed by John Denver's acting in Oh, God! Denver was then at the height of his popularity and had already appeared on TV in both the United States and Great Britain, so he knew how to perform well in front of a camera. A consummate professional, Denver threw himself into the role of Jerry Landers, a non-singing part that called on him to play straight man to Burns and share the screen with a talented group of actors that included Teri Garr, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Barnard Hughes, Dinah Shore (as herself)  and William Daniels.

Oh, God! may not have been 1977's biggest hit, but it earned over $51 million at the box office and received an Oscar nomination (for Best Adapted Screenplay) and positive reviews from critics and audiences alike. Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer-winning film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, praised director Carl Reiner's earnest intention to not be blasphemous in its treatment of the subject. He also thought Burns and Denver were perfectly matched as co-stars, laboring as a team " with Reiner, and with Larry Gelbart's screenplay, to create a movie that takes a really risky comic gamble, and wins."

I had not seen Oh, God! since it was aired on broadcast TV (on ABC, if I recall correctly) in the late 1970s, but after I realized that my home media collection doesn't have that many comedies, I recently bought the 2003 Warner Home Video DVD release. (I really wanted to get Oh, God! on Blu-ray, but Warner Bros. has not released it as a high-definition offering yet.)

The DVD release reflects the Warner Bros. philosophy about its lesser hits on home media. It presents Reiner's 1977 film in its widescreen format and a decent Dolby sound mix. The DVD also has subtitles in English (for the hearing impaired), French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Warner Bros. didn't add too many extra features; viewers will only get an audio commentary by Teri Garr (who played a similar role in 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart (who died in 2009), and producer Jerry Weintraub. There are also trailers for Oh, God! and its two sequels, but no behind-the-scenes documentaries or archival interviews from the 1970s.

All in all, though, the DVD is still worth checking out, especially if you've never seen Oh, God! before.

Source: Roger Ebert review, archived in Roger Ebert.com