Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. review by Bobby Blakey
When dealing with religion, especially the church there are so many directions filmmakers can go. In the latest film Honk For Jesus, Save Your Soul it looks like fusing some humor and scandal to tell the tale. The film stars Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown, Nicole Beharie, Conphidance, and Austin Crute from director Adamma Ebo. Could this film shine the light on the workings of the mega church or will it need more prayers?
Honk For Jesus, Save Your Soul follows Trinitie Childs, the proud first lady of a Southern Baptist megachurch who together with her husband Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs, once served a congregation in the tens of thousands. But after a scandal forces their church to temporarily close, Trinitie must get creative if they’re to regain access to the lavish blessings that keep them in the extravagant lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.
I think from the trailers I was expecting a more straight forward comedy, but there is actually a lot more here. Sure there are some laughs, but it is focusing on different elements of faith, lies and abundance in a very sad but true place for a lot of these mega churches and their leaders. The documentary style storytelling allows for it to break the fourth wall and really showcase the fight to live the lie that is created.
Regina Hall is great here having to juggle her emotions from loving wife and honored first lady of the church to scorned wife and shame dealing with the situation and fight to rise back to the heights of before. She deals with not only all of these things, but her own faith and the right direction to what she believes and sadly what others around her thinks she should be doing. This offers up the biggest depth to the film and is really about her more than anything else.
Brown is all in here as Paster Lee-Curtis and he is something else. He is everything you expect these flashy mega preachers to be and then some. His delusion to his status and obsession with material things is a look into that world that we all know exists but are baffled to why people buy into it all.
The story is simple and the scandal unfolds as the story is told in an interesting way that leads up to the real life ending that might not work for everyone. There are some cringe worthy moments especially at the end in some of the things they do to try to rebuild. On the flip side there are some uncomfortable moments that help to make you see the reality of things inside the drama and delusion.
I really liked this films direction and the final shot screams the realization of the truth of the nonsense in the best way possible. In addition to the film this release offers up bonus content including an alternate opening, deleted / extended / alternate scenes, a gag reel, featurettes and more. Join the sermon and grab your copy of Honk For Jesus. Save You Soul. when available now on digital, Blu-ray and DVD from Universal Home Entertainment.ures.
