Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. (2022) Review

 "Shake it for the Lord!"

-Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs

Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) and his wife, Trinitie (Regina Hall), run a Southern Baptist megachurch.  A scandal causes them to lose most of their congregants and they are forced to close the church.  With a month until Easter, Lee-Curtis hires a documentary crew to film them as they prepare to reopen the church.

What Works:

I went into this movie expecting it to be a satire of megachurches and for the first half of the movie, that's the case.  The movie does a great job of pointing out the hypocrisy of these churches and the theatrics they use.  It's both funny and intelligent.  These aren't all cheap shots like you might expect.  There is some really intelligent humor here.

The second half of the movie gets more serious, which doesn't completely work, which I'll get to later.  What does work are the performances of the lead characters.  Regina Hall is fantastic as our main protagonist.  The movie becomes kind of a character study about Trinitie and why she puts up with her husband and stays in this life.  The movie doesn't suceed here, but it gives Hall the opportunity to give an amazing performance and bring a wide range to what could have been a pretty one-dimensional character.

Sterling K. Brown is just as good.  He gets to give a few monologues and you really buy into him being a Southern Baptist megachurch preacher.  He's brilliant in the role.  But he also has a whole other side that Brown reveals in pieces with some really excellent work.

My favorite scene of the movie comes fairly early on after the film crew starts shooting.  We get our first scene of Lee-Curtis and Trinitie alone without the crew around them and they drop their personas and start rapping in the car.  It's an awesome moment.

Finally, the movie is mostly shown in mockumentary style, but it's not all shot that way.  Sometimes we get old videos of Lee-Curtis giving a sermon.  Sometimes we get the Childs' on their own, away from the cameras, and those scenes are shot differently.  I like how the movie can transition from different styles so easily.  It makes the film as a whole feel a lot more dynamic than it could have been. 

What Sucks:

 

Like I mentioned, the second half of the movie doesn't work as well because they turn away from satire to being a character study.  Maybe on the rewatch I will like it more, but I felt like they didn't do enough to really explore the character of Trinitie.  They could have done more with her and some of the supporting characters

The same goes for the satire.  While I liked it, I feel like it could have been more biting.  Megachurch pastors are scum and the movie doesn't treat Lee-Curtis as harshly as it needed to.  They didn't need to go as hard as something like South Park, but if they had trended that direction, it would have been nice.

Finally, towards the end of the second act, the movie loses some steam.  There's a 15 minute stretch where it isn't super interesting.  Some of that could have been cut down.

Verdict:

Honk for Jesus.  Save Your Soul. is a funny movie with some decent satire and excellent performances from the leads.  I just wish they had taken this concept and gone father with it.  It's a good movie, but with some more teeth and a stronger second half, this could have been brilliant.

 7/10: Good