Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.

 

One's response to Adamma Ebo's rousingly satirical "Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul." will no doubt depend on the closeness of one's walk with the prosperity gospel movement. One person's sacred cow is another's barbecue.

Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall are a disgraced Atlanta megachurch pastor and his wife / the church's first lady, who deftly blend acquisitiveness with divine grace. A documentary film crew has arrived to record the pastor's return to the pulpit. The plan is to reopen on the upcoming Easter -- the symbolism of rising from the dead is both intentional and disastrous.

During the course of interviews with the pastor and first lady (seemingly blissfully unaware of the rank materialism that defines their mission and marriage), former congregants and others, we begin to see the fissures running through the reverend's posturing and the startling hypocrisy he's trying mightily to conceal.

Early reactionary comments have condemned the film, for which both Brown and Hall are producers, as an attack on Christians. This is not a surprising response, but Ebo, who wrote and directed the film, takes pains to draw a bead on a movement that too often has been shown to defraud the gullible through appeals to fear and guilt. This is the reverend's M.O., wrapped in sanctimony and delivered in a Prada bag.

Brown and Hall, both fine actors, give their all to roles that might seem cartoonish at first but are actually much more nuanced than the surrealism of the theatrics and hollow speechifying would suggest. Hall especially, who is actually the face of the film (in a very real way in the final 10 minutes), embodies Ebo's theme that you can despise both the sin and the sinner and not lose faith.