Movie Review: Honk For Jesus Save Your Soul

Alright so now streaming on Peacock is a movie about 2 troubled… owners? Ministers? Of a Mega Church and it is done Mockumentary style. It is based on a short film from the directors- the Ebo Sisters- who for some reason I refer to as the BBQ sisters because I was having vision problems when I saw the poster and read BBQ Sisters. It is also produced by Jordan Peele, and it stars Sterling K Brown and Regina Hall.

So while I honestly didn’t like this film that much… I don’t think it’s a total failure. The EBO sisters you could tell are good filmmakers. Sterling K Brown and Regina Hall are both really good in this movie… there’s just something that was kind of missing in the movie. It was supposed to be a Dark Comedy… but there were no real funny moments and I didn’t exactly think the movie was dark enough either. It was kind of hard to empathize with the 2 main characters because they’re bad people… mega churches are kind of a weird culture I don’t understand and… the reason why the 2 are in trouble was just too much…

Mild spoiler here… but I can’t really criticize what I’m about to criticize without going into detail here. We find out that Sterling K Brown’s character was in trouble for Sexual Misconduct on several young men. They explain several times that while the men were very young- they were all over 18… so nothing that he was doing was illegal. It just seems that they kept doing that so that we wouldn’t just entirely write off his character as a criminal. We also do see him hit on a man that is working on the documentary and it is very creepy and it’s something that would make me feel uncomfortable if I was approached that way. He is also married to a woman… and he clearly is not attracted to her because he’s gay. And while the reveal of that was interesting… they never really do much other than that. The movie just kind of ends with no resolution or anything… which is how I wanted it to end but… it still isn’t great.

I would watch another movie from the EBO sisters. Their way of setting up the conflict of this movie was really good and I feel like this was a hard movie to get right and that’s why it just didn’t really work for me. There were some parts where nothing was really happening- but the story was still pretty damn gripping. They also did have some hints as to what the scandal was before ultimately revealing what it was… which was actually pretty good. All the little details paid off for that reveal- I think it was just too early on in the movie that it was revealed.

Over All… if you’re looking for something to watch and you have Peacock… this isn’t the first thing I’d recommend. It did have redeeming qualities but overall at the end of the movie I was just really bored and the characters just weren’t likable… and it was just kind of long. There isn’t much good I can say about it… but overall I think it had potential… and I think the cast and the directors were good… but it still just fell flat.

This might actually be the most disappointed I’ve been in a movie for a while… and honestly I’ve seen 3 pretty bad movies in a row essentially. I did also see Everything, Everywhere, All At Once- which I really liked… but other than that I saw Tusk and Zombies 2 which are disappointing… I will talk more about them sometime later… but yeah.

Bye!

-Shannon