One of the all-time classic terminal-illness movies was the made-for-TV Death Be Not Proud, starring a young Robby Benson as a teenager with a fatal brain tumor who would not "go gentle into that good night." It was a stirring motivational pitch for living every day with vigor, if not exactly panache. Many many films over the years have tried to find a story that matches the spark which Benson and company caught in Death.

Letters to God is not, I repeat not, the latest film to attempt replicating Death's success. And that's good, because it's not nearly the film as Death Be Not Proud. But again—it's not trying to be. It's after something a little different—something a bit gentler and less declarative, something a bit more every-day in its application than struggles with death.

The central story is, nonetheless, a based-in-real-life account of young Tyler, who, as the story begins, is recovering from brain-tumor surgery. We pick up the tale not as the shock of impending death sets in—but through the in-between stages of grief, somewhere after denial and somewhere before acceptance. Tyler and his single mom are still hopeful that surgery and chemo might do the trick; Tyler's older brother just wishes life could go back to "normal."

The hook in this story is Tyler's titular letters to God. Each day, and often more than once, Tyler writes a letter to God telling Him what he feels about his condition—and the condition of those around him. They are not prayers per se—at least, not prayers as we tend to think of them. And yet Tyler is rather the ideal pray-er: a young man-to-be who is in constant communication with his Big Best Friend, a boy who typifies what it means to "pray without ceasing." Because he talks to God so often, the talks can be less formal, more personal.

Tyler puts his letters in the mailbox for delivery—where they must be dealt with by the substitute mailman, Brady, an on-the-way-down failing husband and father whose relationship with the bottle is a lot like Tyler's relationship with God. As Brady struggles to figure out what to do with those letters, he also figures out what to do with his life. As Tyler goes in for another last-ditch round of surgery, his mom, Maddy, also figures out how she's going to be able to move on with life.

You might suspect that the solution to everyone's problems is going to be a brand-new nuclear family; and you might suspect that the power of prayer is going to triumph in a health-and-wealth Gospel kind of way. But whether your distrust of moviemaking or churchy prayer warriors is greater, I think you'll be surprised by how the story plays out—even if you manage to guess the gist of the plot, or have gleaned too much from reviews and trailers.

We can all use a stronger spiritual life, I suspect. And as Tyler learns and teaches, that means—at the very least—growing closer to those around us, to those with whom we find ourselves pulling at the oars through the gales of life. And if our heart is in the right place... well, it doesn't matter where God is, or whether He actually gets our letters, much less answers them. What matters is that we reach out, and that in reaching out we change each other for the better.