HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL. – Review

Just in time for the big holiday weekend that “closes the curtain” on the summer blockbusters of 2022, comes a comedy that’s more than a bit different from the usual warm weather farces. That’s because it’s part of the increasingly popular subgenre, the “mockumentary”, which parodies documentary features (that’s the “mock” part). It stretches back more than fifty years, to Woody Allen’s feature directing debut, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, but most current film fans zero in on Rob Reiner’s THIS IS SPINAL TAP, which inspired one of its stars, Christopher Guest, to create his beloved string of cult classics like BEST IN SHOW and A MIGHTY WIND. And a few others jump in with such efforts as CB4 and WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (which spawned a still-running TV series). The small -screen has embraced the format with hits like “The Office” and “Modern Family”. But it’s back on the big screen in a big way, as this story two main characters implore drivers to HONL FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL.

The two in question are the founders of a big “mega-church” right outside of Atlanta. We first see them in “action” via “news archive footage. The Reverend Lee Curtis-Childs (Sterling K Brown) aided by his wife and “first lady” Trinitie (Regina Hall) “packed the pews” and sent their sermons over the airwaves LIVE from the Wander the Greener Path Baptist Church, which could almost double as a mall or a college. But those days are long gone, thanks to the Rev’s recent scandals (some “improprieties” that he and the missus don’t want to discuss on camera with the doc crew following them). Now that the trials are over and “settlements” have been made, the duo are determined to re-open their “palace of worship”. Luckily they still have a handful of followers, but the majority of their old “flock’ is now down the street at Heaven’s House run by a married evangelical “tag-team’, Shakura (Nicole Behaire) and Keon (Conphidance) Sumpter, who are planning a big expansion. Nonetheless, Pastor Lee has a “vision” of a big, splashy “re-opening” on Easter Sunday, only weeks away. Trinitie is supportive, but has her concerns, especially when they find out the Sumpters will have the big debut of their shiny new facility on the same day. Will someone “blink”, or could this be the beginning of a modern “holy war”?

Although not the most flamboyant of the duo, Ms. Hall truly carries the film as the true ‘rock” of this battered church. Yes, she strides about in her outrageous “Sunday go ta’ meetin'” ensembles as though Trinitie was “working the runaway”, but her fashion style is used to obscure her doubts, from her marriage to the “spiritual rebirth’ of WTGPBC. With her expressive eyes and subtle gestures, Hall conveys the character’s vulnerability over the “public humiliations” while flashing a frozen grin for the doc cameras, and evading any negative aspects. It’s certainly more than her ego-fueled “other-half” deserves. Brown plays him almost as a strutting peacock, his smile becoming a menacing leer as he “puffs out” for the cameras and revels in his sense of entitlement and blind confidence in his “gifts”.His “showboat” style can’t quite cover his rage over his unpure impulses, and his need to destroy those who would thwart his plans (“Cut the cameras…now!!”). Behaire and Conphiance have fewer scenes, put we see how they’re veering on to the same road while believing themselves above the shallow former “religious royalty”.

Expanding on her 2018 film short of the same name, writer/director Adamma Ebo does capture the look of the mega-churches and the “holy circus” flashy “sermonizin'”, but it feels like “shooting fish in a barrel”, with a subject matter too easy to mock, especially after last year’s THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE which mined much of the same material while also delivering the drama of the Bakers. The Reverend comes off even more cartoonish as he pushes his Pradas toward the cameras, while Trinitie continues to be humiliated and brushed aside. In the finale when she “finds her voice” the shocking “gag” can’t quite overcome the degrading antics she endures outside the church’s entrance (I just didn’t buy it, even for a farce). Despite the “shock” tactics, it’s “been there, and the real “deal” is often more outrageous and grotesque”. And certainly not enlightening or entertaining, despite the best efforts of the lead duo. Sure they’re “all in’ with their role, but they can’t “revive’ the dreary, one-joke-long slog that is HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL. Amen and oy vey!

One Out of Four

HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL opens in select theatres and streams on Peacock beginning on Friday, September 2, 2022