Post by Dracula on Sept 24, 2022 18:57:23 GMT -5
Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul(9/3/2022)
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the trailers for the new film Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, which kind of looked like a satire of megachurch culture but not necessarily a super cutting one and the trailers didn’t exactly seem hilarious to me. I wasn’t really sold on the movie when it would have meant driving out to a theater to see it, but when I learned it would also be streaming for free on Peacock (a service I keep forgetting I have) I was just interested enough to give it a try. Watching it I’m actually still kind of confused as to what tone this was going for. The film is about a married couple (played by Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall) who are in charge of a megachurch in Atlanta which has had to close because of a sex scandal involving the Sterling K Brown character, the details of which are left somewhat vague. The movie is seemingly very critical of these characters and basically views them as charlatans who have let the desire for wealth and status overcloud any real concern they have for their parishioners, but it also seems to be bending over backwards to make it super clear that they’re only angry at some of the excesses of the megachurches rather than an attack on religion and in a lot of ways that kind of makes it feel a bit weak and compromised. I should note that I have no personal experiences with the black church, megachurches, any other forms of protestant Christianity, and my experiences with any other form of organized religion ended when I was about thirteen. I suspect that if I had more familiarity with these kinds of communities I would recognize more of the quirks this is referencing, but I’m not, and it’s not entirely clear to me how much of what I’m seeing in this is to be considered a “normal” example of megachurch behavior and how much is supposed to be comedically exaggerated, it’s just kind of an absurdly garish world to me. The film is based on a novel by Adamma Ebo, who also wrote and directed this film adaptation, which perhaps suggests to me that this was not originally envisioned as a comedy and during large portions of this it doesn’t play out like one… so I’m not exactly sure how intentional it was that I didn’t find the movie to be very funny at all. Truthfully I’m not sure this movie knows what it wanted to be, or at least the studio didn’t seem to know what it was supposed to be, and if this what it wanted to be… maybe it should have wanted to be something with a stronger point of view and more of an interest in entertaining its audience. I don’t want to go too hard on it, there are some decent moments here and it’s at least a fairly dignified project but there was really nothing there for me.
** out of Five
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the trailers for the new film Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, which kind of looked like a satire of megachurch culture but not necessarily a super cutting one and the trailers didn’t exactly seem hilarious to me. I wasn’t really sold on the movie when it would have meant driving out to a theater to see it, but when I learned it would also be streaming for free on Peacock (a service I keep forgetting I have) I was just interested enough to give it a try. Watching it I’m actually still kind of confused as to what tone this was going for. The film is about a married couple (played by Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall) who are in charge of a megachurch in Atlanta which has had to close because of a sex scandal involving the Sterling K Brown character, the details of which are left somewhat vague. The movie is seemingly very critical of these characters and basically views them as charlatans who have let the desire for wealth and status overcloud any real concern they have for their parishioners, but it also seems to be bending over backwards to make it super clear that they’re only angry at some of the excesses of the megachurches rather than an attack on religion and in a lot of ways that kind of makes it feel a bit weak and compromised. I should note that I have no personal experiences with the black church, megachurches, any other forms of protestant Christianity, and my experiences with any other form of organized religion ended when I was about thirteen. I suspect that if I had more familiarity with these kinds of communities I would recognize more of the quirks this is referencing, but I’m not, and it’s not entirely clear to me how much of what I’m seeing in this is to be considered a “normal” example of megachurch behavior and how much is supposed to be comedically exaggerated, it’s just kind of an absurdly garish world to me. The film is based on a novel by Adamma Ebo, who also wrote and directed this film adaptation, which perhaps suggests to me that this was not originally envisioned as a comedy and during large portions of this it doesn’t play out like one… so I’m not exactly sure how intentional it was that I didn’t find the movie to be very funny at all. Truthfully I’m not sure this movie knows what it wanted to be, or at least the studio didn’t seem to know what it was supposed to be, and if this what it wanted to be… maybe it should have wanted to be something with a stronger point of view and more of an interest in entertaining its audience. I don’t want to go too hard on it, there are some decent moments here and it’s at least a fairly dignified project but there was really nothing there for me.
** out of Five
