Amazing Grace is a warm, pleasant biopic about a warm, pleasant man. It features our hero, William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) fighting the British Parliament in order to accomplish the inspiring feat of ending the slave trade in the Kingdom. The film even offers us a sweet subplot (including a meetcute!) of the brief courtship of Wilberforce and his wife. To top it all off, Grace sprinkles some Christian goodness into the film, even providing for the origin of the titular hymn.

But just because it’s Good and Important doesn’t make it a great film. The biopic is more history lessen than storytelling. It’s worthy of both Sunday School and a Junior High Social Studies class, but not necessarily the big screen. Through in a series of flashbacks, the work of William Wilberforce is told fairly straightforwardly, hitting on the significant aspects of his life and showing us the struggles gone through in order to convince the legislature to change their minds.

Grace’s religious subplot is a valuable one, but is touched on too lightly to give it any real weight to the narrative. Though the first line of the film’s title is sung on a couple of occasions, the title actually feels more like part of an ad campaign engaged towards the Christian audience than an attempt to say anything of import about Christianity.