Miracles from Heaven

Texas mother Christy Beam (Jennifer Garner) is first distraught at the life-threatening illness of her daughter (Kylie Rogers), then amazed at her miraculous recovery after falling from a tree—especially when the girl says she visited heaven while unconscious. This adaptation of Beam’s memoir has strong performances, particularly by Garner and Rogers, to compensate for what might have been a slew of fatal drawbacks: a too-chipper atmosphere of sun-splashed wholesomeness, a leaden pace from director Patricia Riggen that takes forever to get around to showing things we’ve already seen in the preview trailer, an irrelevant time-wasting cameo by Queen Latifah and a kitschy-koo Candy Land vision of heaven. A simple monologue by Rogers would have been more effective; the kid could have handled it. J.L.