Oh, God! You Devil (1984)

With a kid working on an ad campaign for God, the sequel in 1980, Book II, was as charming as a Charlie Brown cartoon and probably as good as these Oh God! movies were ever going to get, but the makers force things onwards with this threequel, making demands on an even older George Burns who has to play not just his cigar-chomping, wisecracking God but also a cigar-chomping, wisecracking, tap-dancing (!) Devil, both of them involved in the life of a rockstar wannabe who, thanks to not very good plotting, never really deserves the trouble he lands in and never seems to realise how much worse his poor "fill in" has it.

★★☆☆☆

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Oh, God! Book II (1980)

As in the 1977 original, George Burns' God's strategy for spreading the word of his existence is to appear before doubters and wow them with some 80s-cinema SFX...but not until after he has first driven one unfortunate soul to an asylum with a diagnosis of delusional psychosis, and in this sequel the poor individual isn't John Denver but Tracy Richards, an 11 year old who really should be practising spelling and coming to terms with her parents' divorce, not god-bothered, but she is such a delight, her friend Shingo is so relaxed and natural, their interactions are so well acted, and the movie is so gently amusing and unsanctimonious that the ridiculousness of God's methods doesn't matter: this is a pleasure.

★★★☆☆

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Oh, God! (1977)

Given in the end it takes God turning up in person in an American courtroom to convince those gathered of his existence, his plan occupying the rest of this comedy - communing exclusively with supermarket manager Jerry Landers and having him spread the Word to people who without exception believe him to be a delusional whack-job - seems a harebrained undertaking longwindedly achieving nothing, but John Denver stars as Landers - so that's interesting for a start - and the movie avoids tiresome God-bothering and the trap of sanctimoniousness or saccharinity and instead, with George Burns as a bespectacled waddling old man of a God, is dryly funny and effortless to watch, even given the idiocy of God's plan.

★★★☆☆

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