Heaven Is for Real is a movie that is based on the real life story of a four-year-old boy named
Colton Burpo. Burpo tells his story about going to Heaven during emergency surgery in 2003. This
story is also a best selling book written by his father Todd Burpo. The movie came out on April 16
,2014, just in time for Easter.
The movie 's opening scene of a little girl painting on a canvas is puzzling at first. Then we are given a
presentation of Todd Burpo and his family going through their daily lives before Colton's emergency
surgery for a ruptured appendix. The Burpos are having financial troubles, but manage to get through
their daily responsibilities. Todd does his duties as pastor which include, praying for a sick old man in
the hospital which Colton does too. Todd also does his duties as a volunteer firefighter. He places some
flowers on a grave, he has a few health problems too; like breaking his foot in a softball game and
getting kidney stones. The pastor trying to pass them was a hilarious scene. He takes his family on a
day trip to this place in Denver, CO where butterflies are flying around. There’s a spider present that
Colton doesn't want to hold while his sister is able to.
But things like his wife giving a pink girl's dress to friends with a baby girl, the grave scene and the
opening scene get connected together throughout the film and by the end.
Shortly after the trip, things really start to get rough for the family. Colton and his sister seem to
develop the flu at first. But Colton turns out to have a ruptured appendix. He gets emergency surgery
done immediately. His mother tells their friends how bad it is and to pray for him. There is a montage
of scenes where people do just that. I really like when his firefighters friends start to pray for Colton,
they include a shot of pictures of fire trucks that were colored and points out one is Colton's. One scene
is the aforementioned sick old man whom Todd was praying for earlier, now healthy on a tractor with a
kid praying too. Talk about paying someone back for something.
Todd Burpo's faith throughout this has been getting bruised. At the time of Colton's surgery, it gets
battered.
Later in the film Todd is speaking about how they lost someone and how that impacted them. He asks
God not to take Colton as well. Colton makes it through the surgery and then decides to go back to the
place with the spider and hold it. Gradually it comes out that he had been to heaven. He even saw
Jesus and Angels that look like beings of light that sing to him.
I mention Todd's faith, because of Colton's experience, becoming battered. The effects starts to show.
He cannot seem to speak at his church and has people asking questions about what Colton's saying
through a banker's friend and psychiatrist who mentions her late husband wanted her to hear him
speak. Nether person is really helpful. In fact, the board of his church has a meeting about their
concerns due to Colton's experience for the church and talk of firing Todd.
Colton does a good job of believing it actually happened like his Dad said he did. He even tells a cancer
stricken kid no one will hurt you. It does come to light that one woman on the church board lost a son
in combat. That is whom Todd had been putting flowers on the grave for. He considers this woman's
son's death a moment where he was lacking in his duties as pastor. The woman assures him he wasn't
and discusses things this has brought up like “Do you believe my son is in heaven?” Colton's mother
believes he just incorporated things he has seen in the event. But she's convinced and Todd's faith is
made solid when Colton mentions a girl came up to him in Heaven and said she was his sister. They
did lose a girl which explains the pink dress. Colton even knew they didn't name her.
He makes his belief that his son indeed went to heaven known to his friends at his church and even to
the psychiatrist who said her late husband wanted her to hear him. As for the girl painting on the
canvas ,that turns out to be a painting of Jesus. Todd is looking at the video of her online at CNN and
she turns out to have been to heaven at one point too. The painting of Jesus which Colton recognizes as
Jesus from his experience is what she saw as part of her heaven visit. With this going on no wonder a
book was done on it by the father.