I Can Only Imagine (2018)
10-year-old Bart Millard lives with his mother and abusive father Arthur in Texas. One day his mother drops him off at a Christian camp where he meets Shannon. Upon his return from camp, Bart finds his mother has left and movers are removing her belongings. He angrily confronts his father, who denies that his abusiveness was the reason she left. Years later, in high school, Bart and Shannon are dating. Bart plays football to please his father, but is injured, breaking both ankles and ending his career. The only elective with openings is music class, so he reluctantly signs up.
The song you know. The story you don't.
Memaw: Imagine what he is seeing up there, just imagine!
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
El Reno, Oklahoma, USA
Jones, Oklahoma, USA
Yukon, Oklahoma, USA
Del City, Oklahoma, USA
Dennis Quaid's twins are extras in the diner scene. His daughter is the one who points towards Quaid's character during his health incident.
Dennis Quaid's character was a quarterback in high school. Dennis Quaid [not his character] also played a quarterback in Any Given Sunday (1999). If you notice the picture Bart has of his dad, it's a picture of Quaid in his #19 black jersey from Any Given Sunday.
During the opening scene set in 1985, young Bart is riding his bike through town. He passes a movie theater showing the titles Jaws 3-D (1983) and The Goonies (1985) on the marquee. Dennis Quaid, who plays Bart's father, Arthur, played the lead role of Mike Brody in Jaws 3-D in 1983.
In the movie, Trace Adkins's character tells Bart "Bring the Rain" boys when they got to Nashville for the GMA's. This would be the title of a hit song for the band in 2001.
This is John Michael Finley's first movie role.
Factual errors
When Bart's mom is driving him to the camp, and Bart puts in U2's The Joshua Tree cassette tape. Then a U2 song starts to play , but the song isn't from The Joshua Tree, instead the song is" Into the Heart" which is a song from their first album Boy.
In one of the first scenes, set in 1985, the record store owner recommended Bart to listen to U2's "The Joshua Tree" cassette. The Joshua Tree was not released until 1987. Later in the movie, Bart had a different U2 tape, Boy, which he asked his mother to play.
MercyMe lead singer Bart Millard started wearing glasses while he was growing up and still does today. But the movie depicts him not wearing glasses at all, even as a teenager and then an adult being played by actor J. Michael Finley.
Bart Millard's older brother Stephen is nowhere to be seen or mentioned in this movie. This movie depicts Bart as if he were the only child - which is false.
Bart Millard's father Arthur did not resort to substance abuse like the movie shows, but simply had anger issues that were the root cause of abuse, where Bart was beaten up to three or four times weekly throughout his childhood before his father's passing.
Revealing mistakes
When Bart is in the Camp Lunch Line the Cook Gives him a hot dog with fries, a few seconds later Bart turns around and now has a burger and fries on his plate.
Bart tells his Dad that he will be singing at the church and he can listen on AM 1080. Every scene in the movie that shows his Dad's radio shows the band switch in the FM position, not the AM band.
Miscellaneous
At the scene when you see WJDC Studios with the board faders on the PR&E Radiomixer-12 console down and the off lights (yellow colored) out, but still hear audio, that's the production room being shown and the jock 2 rooms barely seen down the hall has the station live in the on air room.
Anachronisms
Young Bart is handed the U2 album The Joshua Tree (1987) in 1985.
The version of "Hallelujah" the Glee club was singing in 1991 is based on Jeff Buckley's 1994 rendition.
In the 1985 scenes, the record store has a poster in the window for the first .38 Special record. This album came out in 1977, and was not a big commercial success at its time of release; its popularity was eclipsed by the band's subsequent releases. Additionally, it was already horribly out of date by the time this scene is set; no record store would be likely to display a poster for an album eight years old that was not commercially successful.
Errors in geography
The timing based in the movie is supposed to be in 1999 when radio stations have an older system of the "Emergency Alert System" in place. At KMGL, they have a new blue digital EAS-CAP box called "Sage Digital Endec" which is incorrect for the timing of the movie because in 1999, Sage had a gray box called "Sage EAS Endec" in place, almost a decade prior to when they made the new blue emergency alerting encoders.
Character error
When Bart meets Amy Grant for the first time he calls her "Miss Bart" instead of Miss Grant.
Amy tells the audience that they will be the first to hear I Can Only Imagine, but others have heard Bart's demo which was recorded in front of a live audience.
This movie's portrayal of characters in terms of physical appearance is historically inaccurate when compared to what they looked like during the actual events of the story.