Superficial approach isn't worthy of famed evangelist

Rated PG (thematic material including some disturbing images, brief language and smoking). 1 hour, 39 minutes

Bottom line: Film presents characters so uncomplicated they belong in a pop-up book.

There's a well-defined line between wholesome and hokey, especially when depicting the life one of the 20th century's respected religious figures.

I know director Robby Benson can tell the difference, because he's a friend.

I assume Billy Graham can tell the difference, or he wouldn't have had such impact on millions of people.

But the writers and producers of "Billy: The Early Years" either couldn't or wouldn't make that distinction. The film, which covers Graham's life roughly from the ages of 16 to 30, presents us with characters so uncomplicated they belong in a pop-up book.

They do make for pleasant, inoffensive company. Armie Hammer, who was 21 during the shooting, is wholly engaging as Graham, whether making calf eyes at future wife Ruth Bell (Stefanie Butler) or delivering his first herky-jerky sermon to a stunned congregation.

Butler is winsome as the ideal wife-to-be, and Kristoffer Polaha has charisma and authority as Charles Templeton, who partnered with Graham in evangelism before losing his faith and leaving the ministry.

But the basic framework of the film is always shaky. It begins with a TV reporter (Jennifer O'Neill in a throwaway role) interviewing the dying Templeton (Martin Landau) in his hospital bed.

Billy, the teenaged son of a Charlotte dairy farmer, gets shaken to his core by tent revivalist Mordecai Ham (powerful Cliff Bemis). For a minute, we see a young man wrestling with his desires and a new possibility for his destiny. Then the movie descends into overly simplistic territory: Billy dropping a load of dishes (in slow motion) while trying to impress the wrong girl, Billy fainting at the birth of his first baby after marrying the right one.

The movie keeps cutting back to aged Templeton, who's obsessed with images of the Holocaust (the event that prevented him from believing in a loving deity) and the approach of the Grim Reaper.

A picture like this one can't let an intelligent atheist die in peace; it's not enough that he die mistaken, in the eyes of the filmmakers, but that he admit his mistake. The film not only reassures believers but wags a finger in the faces of unbelievers.

And there we come to the film's greatest weakness, if it's meant to be an effective outreach toward people who aren't already Christians: It makes believing in God seem as easy as asking a generous dad for a bigger allowance.

The movie's Billy Graham sails joyfully through life after his quick conversion. He's never sad, never angry, never commits a wrong he can't take back, never faces a dark night of the soul. What could someone struggling to find the Lord learn from so superficial a character?