The production is beautiful. So squeaky-clean. So much emphasis on a love story taking precedence over a moment of history. For all its anti-evolution talk, it never makes any valid points against it, but does bring up important issues such as eugenics. Perhaps the pseudo-Disney approach, lush music, soft-focus cameras, oh-so-traditionally old-fashioned production values are a disguise for religious propaganda. But the worst revisionism is not any attempt to derail the force of evolution and progress in education. The worst revisionism is the utterly false picture of an oh-so-happy South in which the races mixed easily and freely in social and work situations. The Black nurse shows no fear of the White clients or employers, and even speaks up to some. The female lead has mixed-race half-sister. No racial tension to speak of. That is a scurrilous portrait to paint of the oh-so-hate-filled South. If these undercurrents are associated with these very fine production values, that is the worst of all.

For years, Hollywood has made various adaptations of the Scopes Monkey Trial by doing versions of "Inherit the Wind", a fictionalized account that grinds whatever axes Hollywood wants to grind that year.

This film tries to tell the Christian side of the story, and there is some ax-grinding here.

The things that the film gets right. The "Scopes Monkey Trial" was not a ruthless persecution of poor John Scopes, but a publicity stunt by the dying town of Dayton, Tennessee to try to attract commerce by challenging the Butler Act. It escalated beyond anyone's control when the trial became a debate between Clarance Darrow (played by Brian Dennihy) and failed Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan (played by failed presidential candidate Fred Dalton Thompson) over the Bible and Darwin's theories.

Bryan is portrayed sympathetically here, as truly concerned that the implications that people were drawing from Darwin's theories devalued human life. The film pulls no punches, not only making Bryan completely sympathetic, but also having the subplot of the black girl who is going to be sterilized under theories of eugenics. The film takes pains to point out that Bryan was a champion for women's suffrage and the common man.

Brian Dennehy portrays Clarance Darrow, as a ruthless but somewhat sympathetic lawyer. They do give him a moment where he does something decent, though. But really, Dennehy and Thompson have extended cameos by actors doing an "art" film. The real story is the small town reporter Charles B Anderson (whom I'm guessing is fictional) who works with famous writer H.L. Mencken , and struggles with journalistic ethics vs. wanting to advance himself. He finds himself pulled between his love interest and Mencken, who is portrayed as really kind of unsavory.

Mencken is played with devilish glee by Colm Meaney of Star Trek fame. He has no ethics and doesn't care who he hurts in the process. When a person he mocks complains about why he mocked her, he replies that "because you're backwards and you're proud of it!" It's a great villainous performance.

Some other observations- Filmed in Sepia-Vision. Yes, anything that takes place between about 1850 and 1940 is filmed in "Sepia-Vision" that tinting of film that makes things look brownish. So we are reminded that we are in olden times. "I was fined $100? That's a lot of money back now!" Overall, I recommend this film, heavy handed as it is, and not being particularly religious myself. I think the characters are fleshed out just enough to make them interesting.

How in the world do you produce a boring film about the events so brilliantly treated in the Academy Award winning film "Inherit The Wind"? Answer: Turn the production over to the Church. This production is so squeaky clean and well scrubbed it doesn't even resemble a human story. Amazingly, I didn't even get that this was a "Christian" project until I checked for Extras - something I enjoy doing on DVDs. I wondered how this project had gone so far wrong. And then I found out. The Extras section consisted of discussion prompts for church study groups and references to scripture. I sure wish the DVD box had warned me! It all just made me appreciate the 1960 Spencer Tracey classic that much more. It's hard to believe there are Americans still fighting the Scopes Monkey trial today, nearly 90 years later. It's sad that the church still has to align itself as a mortal enemy of knowledge, but that's a subject for another rant. The one extra star in this review is for the photographic work. This film is really quite visually impressive. I love the subtle use of brown & white (daguerreotype) to give the images a dated look. Very effective. Too bad the rest of this film was so boring.