Movie Review: Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul Doesn't Know What Movie to Be
Part church satire and part relationship drama. Honk for Jesus Save Your Save lands in a mediocre middle of underexplored ideas.
Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul (2022)
Directed by Adamma Ebo
Written by Adamma Ebo
Starring Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown
Release Date September 3rd, 2022
In theaters now and streaming for Peacock subscribers
Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul is a deeply confused movie. The film, directed by newcomer Adamma Ebo, stars Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown as Trinitie and Lee Curtis Childs, the disgraced leaders of a massive mega-church somewhere in the American south. At first, Honk For Jesus Save Your Soul takes on the feel of a Christopher Guest movie about complete un-self aware characters revealing their absurd self-delusions to our gleeful schadenfreude. Then, from time to time, the movie grows deathly serious and as an audience member you are left scratching your head about how the movie intends for you to feel about what you’re watching.
Context clues slowly reveal that Lee Curtis, behind his bluster and expensive suits, is a closeted gay man. The purported scandal that has seemingly decimated his church occurred when Lee Curtiis may or may not have been getting sexually involved with young male members of the church youth. Portions of Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul show the conniving married couple trying to use their vast wealth to make the scandal go away. Meanwhile, the couple is using the documentary being made about their downfall as a marketing tool to promote the big comeback of their church, much to the chagrin of the unseen documentary fillmmaker who claims to only want to tell the truth.
So, what is the truth of Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul? What is the ultimate point of this movie? Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown are performers who are more than capable of delivering a satire of mega-church operators who take money from their congregations to provide a lavish lifestyle while hypocritically claiming that God chose them for this kind of success due to their unyielding faith. This is called Prosperity Gospel and it has its insidious roots in nearly every major conflict of the middle centuries where the 1% claimed that they were rich and powerful by divine birthright while the poor simply had not been chosen by God.
That’s a big broad target that even the least skillful of satirists should be able to hit. And yet, Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul manages to miss the target far more than you would expect. Instead of exploring the absurdity of Trinitie and Lee Curtis’s version of prosperity gospel, writer-director Adamma Ebo muddies the water by including the growing rift between Lee Curtist and Trinitie, even as both refuse any notion of separation or divorce. The drama between husband and wife is heavy and dreary and the way Hall plays scenes opposite Brown in the late second act and much of the third act, is raw and interesting but it also appears to make the case that these are people we should feel sorry for and that just wasn’t possible for me.
An extended and only modestly funny gag in the first act of Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul has Trinitie and Lee Curtis showing off the extensive number of expensive clothes that they keep at the church in order to have the perfect expensive outfit to fit any church occasion. The delusional aspects of these characters and their absurd rationalizations for why they need a 6 figure wardrobe are easily the best part of Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul but sadly, this aspect of the satire gets driven to the background of the movie.
Instead, writer-director Ebo foregrounds the marital tension between Lee Curtis and Trinitie and the movie becomes far too heavy to really enjoy. Regina Hall is great in the few moments she allows herself to be self-righteous and superior to her husband. There could be solid humor to be wrung from Trinitie putting the screws to Lee Curtis but again, the movie introduces an interesting element and then slowly backs away from it. The final moments of Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul then abruptly returns to the comedy of cringe, the Christopher Guest style satire of deluded, arrogant, pathetic individuals getting the comeuppance they deserve and try desperately to avoid. It doesn’t work and Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul slowly deflates into the end credits.
I don’t feel that Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul is a bad movie. Rather, it’s just a muddled, mediocre failure. It’s a film that had talent and ambition behind it but failed in the execution of its broad ideas. The mixture of broad satirical comedy and relationship drama falls desperately flat and curdles briefly before evaporating into the ether. I likely won’t remember Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul by the end of 2022 and that is perhaps the most damning review I can give to this movie. It’s not terrible but it’s not memorable either.
Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul is in theaters as of September 3rd, 2022 and is available now for subscribers to the Peacock streaming service. Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews on my archive blog SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean and follow the archive blog at SeanattheMovies. You can also hear me talk about movies on the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Finally, if you liked what you read, consider subscribing, pledging to support my writing, or making a one time tip here on Vocal. Every little bit helps.
About the Creator
Sean Patrick
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
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