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Movies: Joan of Arcadia USA Today September 26, 2003 Source: http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030926/5537603s.htm 'Joan' asks: What if God was one of us? By Robert Bianco God is in the details. CBS' Joan of Arcadia isn't the year's most promising new drama just because it has the most intriguing premise: God visits a high school girl, his wonders to perform. Creator Barbara Hall also works through her premise to its logical conclusions. As much an exercise in philosophy as spirituality, Joan raises questions people have pondered for centuries. If Hall doesn't have the answers, it's not because she hasn't thought about the questions. That means if you're looking to spend an hour with some sappy, feel-good, Touched by an Angel divine do-gooder, look elsewhere. Joan does more than merely insist that God can walk among us; it asks you to consider what would happen if he did. The thought and care Hall has put into her premise carries over to the casting. Every choice is near ideal, starting with the remarkable Amber Tamblyn, who is so fabulously right as Joan, and including Joe Mantegna and Mary Steenburgen as her parents and Michael Welch and Jason Ritter (son of the late John Ritter) as her brothers. Getting the family right is particularly crucial, because under Joan's godly trappings lurks a first-rate family drama, a genre in short supply. Indeed, the often painfully realistic treatment of the familial anguish that swirls around Kevin (Ritter), who lost the use of his legs in an auto accident, is one of the show's greatest achievements. Somewhat less successfully, Joan also incorporates a cop show, thanks to Mantegna's job as the new chief of police. The stories are truncated, but they stand apart: Neither Joan nor God intervene. Still, the show will rise or fall on the appeal of Joan and her heavenly visitor. There's no hedging: Joan is seeing God. But she never knows what he'll look like next -- a hot boy, a cafeteria lady, a sanitation worker or maybe a little girl. To carry dramatic weight, a fantasy needs its own rules and internal logic, and Joan has them. For one, God can, but won't, work miracles that violate the physical laws of the universe. ''It sets up a bad example if I break them, not to mention that it shows favoritism.'' Oh, and as you can tell from the shape of the world, God has a sometimes dark sense of humor. Whenever he has to prove his identity to Joan, he either reveals some secret or clicks in on what she's thinking. (''News flash, Joan: You don't have to let me in on your thought process. I'm omniscient.'') Some of this, although cute, may also strike some of the faithful as almost insultingly trivial. I'm not sure a few thousand years of theology can be broken down to the self-help motto ''Have some pride. Do better. Do your best.'' But if the often-earnest Joan won't appeal to everyone, that's one of its joys. To appeal to everyone, you can't be anything, think anything or demand anything. Let some other freshman show be the year's most popular. By getting the divine right, Joan lays claim to being the year's best. |
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