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A new documentary co-produced and presented by Morgan Spurlock, the maker of the 2004 Oscar-nominated documentary "Super Size Me," "What Would Jesus Buy?" is being promoted as an incisive condemnation of our consumer-oriented American society, in which unprecedented numbers of our fellow citizens are into credit card debt up to and beyond their eyeballs, yet still heading to shopping malls like lemmings to the cliff. Alas, the real focus of this film is the so-called "Reverend Billy," a self-agrandizing performance artist who leads his fellow-performer parishioners from The Church of Stop Shopping on a cross-country pre-Christmas tour. Actual experts on America's credit crisis get far too little screen time, while the camera follows Billy and crew as he prances, preens, barnstorms The Mall of America, and makes real Americans with real shopping problems look like idiots. The final sequence, in which the group enters Disneyland on Christmas Day and interrupts the park's holiday parade to the bafflement of families is just too sad to watch. He didn't have to ruin the holiday for those people, especially children, to get a very important message across: America is enslaved to its credit cards. I just wish the experts got to explain the crisis more intelligently in a film that's really about an insensitive-seeming bozo.
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frequent movie-goer
Posted by:
UndercoverWriter
(male, late-50s)
(Posted 11/24/07)
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"What Would Jesus Buy?" Sells the Wrong Product
