Actress Candace Cameron Bure says her newest film tells the story of a community who were “the hands and feet of Jesus” when a new family in the neighborhood was in need.
Unsung Hero (PG) opens in theaters April 26 and follows the story of David and Helen Smallbone, who moved from Australia to the United States with their six children in 1991 but faced immediate hardship when his job fell through. Nearly broke, the family relied on odd jobs and the assistance of neighbors to make it.
A single glass jar held all the money they had in their possession for groceries.
The Smallbones were the parents of future CCM artists Rebecca St. James and Joel and Luke Smallbone (For King and Country).
Bure portrays a neighbor and also is an executive producer.
“When they came and shared the script with me and I heard their story -- it's unbelievable,” Bure said.
Bure appeared on The View last week and touted the film.
“Their dad was a very well-known music producer in Australia. And he lost everything after a deal went bad. And they moved to the U.S., they immigrated here and had absolutely nothing -- like a jar of a few dollars,” she said.
The film is “about miracles, it's about the unsung hero, who in my view from this movie is their mom, Helen, who really kept the pieces together of their family while their dad, David … just couldn't catch a break,” Bure said.
The film also stars Daisy Betts and Lucas Black. Joel Smallbone portrays his father, David Smallbone.
“They made their life an adventure. And one of the best lines in the film is, ‘Your family isn't in the way, your family is the way,’ And so it's a really uplifting, beautiful, beautiful story.”
Sunny Hostin, a host on The View, applauded the movie.
“It really is a special movie,” Hostin said. “I saw it last night -- I got a little teary-eyed and I don't really get teary eyed. I thought what was really interesting about the movie was the neighbors and their church community and how they came, they showed up for them. I think that's so important. We're missing a lot of that. We're missing a lot of that in the country.”
Said Bure, “It was the community that were the hands and feet of Jesus.” The Smallbones, she said, “prayed for everything.”
“They actually had more real-life miracles in their life than we could show in the movie because it almost felt inauthentic to show that many miracles,” Bure said.
Images credit: Lionsgate; used with permission.
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.