Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have written two books on St. Anthony of Padua (Anthony: Words of Fire, Life of Light, published by Pauline Books and Media and Praying with Anthony of Padua, published by the Word Among Us). Anthony: Words of Fire, Life of Light is a biography of St. Anthony as told through the eyes of those who knew him. Anthony, as a saint, truly converted me while I was writing this book. So I was very anxious to see this movie on St. Anthony because he is such a powerful saint with such a dramatic life. And I was so terribly disappointed in the film because the Anthony it portrays is not the Anthony of history. The one redeeming aspect of the movie, that I felt was done very well, was Anthony's compassion and intercession for the debtors of Padua. But the rest of the movie was disappointing to me. Here are just some of the things that the movie portrayed that are not in any of the histories: 1. That Anthony killed a man in knightly combat. 2. That Anthony had a girl friend by any name (she is called Teresa in the movie) 3. That Anthony was depressed Here are some wonderful, true incidents in the life of St. Anthony that were not in the movie but, in my opinion, should have been: 1. The power of his preaching. The preaching he is shown giving is sappy, in my opinion, when we actually have volumes of his stirring sermon notes and lofty and beautiful theology. I could have preached better than he did in the movie. 2. The confrontation with heretics (he was called the Hammer of Heretics) yet his love for them. We have hints of this in the movie but don't get a good sense of why he had enemies (the religious and political controversy involving Catharism is not explained well enough). 3. His miracles such as the poor woman's broken wine glass restored or the maid that ran through the rain with vegetables for the friars and didn't get wet or the band of robbers that went to hear him and were all converted. A great deal of the movie concerned fiction that is not in any of the biographies of the saint while leaving out some of the major and powerful aspects of his life. The movie is worth seeing, but it falls short of the saint. I hope someone remakes a movie of St. Anthony and sticks close to his life as we have it historically because such a movie would be stirring indeed.