Sarah’s Oil

Sarah’s Oil is the kind of film that is shockingly hard to review, in that it’s very bad and yet so bland and inoffensive that even trying to muster enough enthusiasm to even treat it like a real movie and not like the glorified late 90s tone deaf hallmark tv movie slop that it is feels like a waste of my time and quite frankly yours. The film tells the true story of Sarah Rector (Naya Desir-Johnson, who gives a performance so gratingly saccharine and aww shucks even Shirley Temple at her most precocious would tell her to tone it down) a young black girl in Early 1900s Oklahoma who discovers through the magic of jesus that her family’s inherited land has oil on it catching the eye of a slick and violent oil baron, what is sarah to do well bring in slick hustler Bertram Smith (Zachary Levi in only his second most punchable performance of 2025) who agrees to be her business partner and is taught tolerance by this plucky kid. Let’s just cut to the chase even in 1997 Sarah’s Oil would feel antiquated and lame, a white savior power fantasy produced by and co-starring an Alt-Right conspiracy theorist desperate to save a promising career he torpedoed based on terrible role choices and spouting dangerous rhetoric, if that was the only issue that would be enough, the bigger problem is this film is simply not worthy of theatrical distribution, it’s flat, dull with no sense of filmmaking craft to be found. Christians and the general moviegoing public deserve better than Sarah’s Oil. 

I Give It 1 1/2 Stars!!!