What Would Jesus Buy?

 

Story:

Taking on rampant American consumerism with a focus on Christmas shopping, the Rev. Billy (Bill Talen) and the Church of Stop Shopping go on a cross-country journey to save citizens from the Shopocalypse in this hilarious documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock. Reminding shoppers of the true meaning of Christmas, Reverend Billy exorcises demons at Wal-Mart's headquarters and preaches his message at the Mall of America and Disneyland (NetFlix).

Review:

First of all, lets just get this straight - What Would Jesus Buy is a social activist film that pushes the film-maker’s viewpoint and which does not necessarily encompass objective debate on the subject matter at hand. Now that we have that out of the way lets talk film. What Jesus Would Buy is a Morgan Spurlock (director of Supersize Me) produced film that stars Reverend Billy, the anti- mega mall sprawl gospel spewing evangelist and his back-up posse, the Church of Stop Singing. The Reverend and his support choir are in fact performance artists who have made it their mission to shake Americans out of their buy now, pay later credit card slumber and engage in targeted public stunts against various corporations to get their point across.  Director Alkemade follows the Reverend and the gospel choir as they go on a road trip across America and make stops at places like Wal-Mart, Starbucks and Disneyland where they carry out pranks on unsuspecting Christmas shoppers. They evade security, cause trouble and risk getting arrested and in the process incite “change-a-lujah” whilst lamenting the loss of a true Christmas spirit. The Reverend tackles a number of issues dear to documentary film-makers and fans – globalization, corporate social responsibility and hyper consumerism and as such has an audience in waiting. Those who regard the antics as being juvenile will immediately be turned off and in that regard it is a pity that as a social activist piece it is unlikely to convert the non-believers.  Whilst Spurlock was the producer here and not the director, it is difficult not to draw comparisons between his last hit, Supersize Me and this one. Supersize Me also set out to make one simple point – that McDonalds was a socially irresponsible corporate which valued the bottom line over and above the welfare of its patrons. Simplified, the core message that What Jesus Would Buy would send out to the villainous corporations would not differ too much from this one. However, Spurlock found a clever way to engage his audiences without preaching (pardon the pun) and in that regard delivered his message in a much more effective fashion. The true measure of an activist documentary I believe is the extent to which it gets its point across to those not familiar with its cause, and unfortunately, the film is likely to turn off many who might regard the public stunts as juvenile pranks lacking a serious message. Reverend Billy however does have a serious message to spread – with the average American holding $8,500 in credit card debt and the general trend of the concentration of economic power in the fewer hands, some radical shake-up is needed to force all of us to think about the choices that we make.

Reviewed by Ewa Bigio for Documentary Film Online on February 18, 2008

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