Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.: A Mockumentary That Occasionally Hits Its Mark

Any satire, especially a mockumentary, works best when it is internally consistent, well-acted, and has a clearly defined target that has not been the target of satire multiple times before. At this point, taking shots at organized religion, specifically the hypocrisy that tends to permeate organized religion, is not exactly a brave or original stance since it has been done with movies from Life of Brian to The Invention of Lying. Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul., a title with way too much punctuation, attempts to take this same stance but without saying anything new.

This film follows Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) and his wife Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall) who are attempting to relaunch their Megachurch after a scandal involving Lee-Curtis’ sexual indiscretions causes it to temporarily shut down. In an effort to chronicle his return to the pulpit, Lee-Curtis hires a documentarian to record the entire process behind his redemption.

In terms of what works about the movie, both Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall put on outstanding performances in the leads. They both do excellent work of letting their façade fall temporarily before noticing they are on camera and bringing it back up because of the nature of the documentary. Hall especially does great work in the third act after the realization of the nature of Trinitie and Lee-Curtis’ relationship hits her, and it is put fully on display for the viewers. The production design around the church is also fantastic, with the full affluence of every aspect of it on full display.

The places where the movie does not work come from the mockumentary aspect of it. First and foremost, a documentarian is not working in the same way a director of a fictional movie is. There is not specifically a script for a documentary, especially one like this one where it posits itself to be a slice-of-life, and as such a lot of decisions are made on the fly while the documentary is being shot as well as in the edit room. The decision by the movie to specifically not have the director talk until the third act does turn the movie on its head a little bit and reframes the entire narrative. This is especially true when the movie is very obviously not receiving a true slice-of-life look based on how much the subjects address the camera directly, even when it is not in the interview portions. Realistically the documentarian would modify their approach as this is happening and not continue to attempt the more veritas-style filmmaking.

The other major issue is that the movie does attempt to make the surrounding area into a type of character in and of itself, however the responses of people in the town do not match with the culmination in the third act. Without spoiling things throughout the film there are points where there are establishing shots with excerpts from radio call-in shows are played to tell the viewer what the public at large thinks of the scandal. The issue is, the plot resolves in the opposite of the indications given by the public in these excerpts without the necessary illustration of the flip from one side to the other. A film can have this kind of “setting as character” motif, however what the audience is seeing should match the reality of the film.

The movie is not terrible and the performances alone are worth the price of admission, however it will probably be ultimately be forgotten as yet another example of a film that attempts to take on religion in a way that has been done countless times before without a new approach. That said, it is a Universal release so it is currently available to watch on Peacock with any of the paid subscription levels, however it is also playing at Island 16 if someone does want to go out and see this film.

Final Rating: 7/10