OH, GOD! BOOK II (1980)
Article 4476 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-16-2014
Directed by Gilbert Cates
Featuring George Burns, Suzanne Pleshette, David Birney
Country: USA
What it is: Spirituality sequel

God picks a little girl to perform a mission for him; spread the word of his existence by writing a slogan for him and then spreading it around.

I quite liked the original movie; it had a quiet, gentle, modest and low-key air about it that made it very likable. It was also one of those movies that felt (to me, anyway) that it would have been better as a stand-alone effort rather than as part of a franchise. As a result, I didn’t have the slightest interest in this sequel when it came out. Oh, it still has George Burns, and he still has that same appeal he had in the earlier movie. But the script is a repeat of the original, with a few details jiggled around here and there, and by choosing a little girl as the protagonist this time around, it’s also a little more manipulative. It even inexplicably repeats one of the oddest touches in the original movie; it casts a well-known character actor (Donald Pleasence in the original, Hans Conried here), and gives them one single line in the whole movie. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the laugh lines are nowhere near as sharp as they were in the earlier movie. The movie is not awful (George Burns is just too likable here for that to happen), but it is unnecessary; at least he next one in the series would try to take it in a different direction.