What Would Jesus Buy?

While this film has amusing and humorous elements, it is NOT a comedy and to call it one is to delegitimize it. This documentary explores the commercialization of the Christmas tradition, which it rightly concludes has lost most of its spiritual meaning in favor of gift giving and the shopping that precedes it. The film further engages the viewer to consider the possibility that this obsession with commercialization bleeds into everyday life.

While many of the points are made by examining the sermons of the dubiously respectable self-styled "Reverend Billy" and his Church of Stop Shopping, which often makes for laughs, to say it is a comedy does not do it justice. This is a true documentary about a true phenomenon in America and a political organization that seeks to challenge it.

Review Date 1/26/2018

PLEASE BEWARE OF SOME REVIEWERS THAT ONLY HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW. WHEN ITS A POSITIVE THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION. NOW I HAVE NO AGENDA! I REVIEW MOVIES & SPECIALS AS A WAY TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT I HAVE SEEN! I HAVE DISCOVERED MANY GEMS IN MY QUEST TO SEE AS MANY " C H R I S T M A S " MOVIES AS I CAN.

Now Someone keeps reporting my reviews. I guess they are jealous because I do tell the truth. I want to point out that I never make snide remarks about actors weight or real life sexual orientation. If there acting is terrible or limited "I talk about that". If a story is bad "I will mention that" So why am I being "picked on"? IMDB? When one of my reviews gets deleted IMDB will not even tell me what someone found offensive. Well on to this review.

This film has a message but it is lost with this mans screaming and grand standing. What isn't covered in this is that there are many people like myself that don't overspend and love the Christmas Season. To me "Christmas Season" is my football season. "Christmas" helps me get through the rest of the year. Christmas is a time of living (for me) guilt free.

The Rev. Billy Tallen and his Stop Shopping Choir embark on a cross-country crusade against the commercialization of Christmas is a good cause but isn't this film also made "To Make Money" and to spread the Billy Tallen's message?

Now many people in the USA are not Church Goers but love Christmas. Christmas brings many people together and that is worth celebrating.

Yes Americans overspend but they don't just overspend at Christmas. That is another point that is overlooked!

It would have also helped if the Rev do not look like Heat Miser from "The Year without a Santa Claus"

What would Jesus buy? Having written to my local preacher at the tender age of 16 (to renounce formally any connection with a faith that I find repugnant), my answer would probably be, "I couldn't give a monkey's." But lest you be put off this rather entertaining documentary, let me reassure you it is not really about religion. Reverend Billy, its key protagonist, is not really a Reverend. And the Jesus catchline is simply to question your unserving faith to the more mundane god of cash-registers.

Think Michael Moore, Ali G, Aaron Barschak, or Super Size Me. Reverend Billy is a character created by actor-comedian Bill Talen, often accompanied by his accomplished artist-wife Savitri Durkee (Director of the 'Church of Stop Shopping'). Then there's the acoustically accomplished 'Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir'. Think protests in Starbucks, Walmart, Times Square and Disneyland. Rage against globalisation. Consumerism. The ever-increasing debt. Use the feelgood singalong style of modern Jesus-music-churches. Find a tagline line such as 'the true meaning of Christmas.' Get taken seriously faster than you can say, "thanks for the donation" (Billy's organisation is tax-deductible – yes, really).

Reverend Billy has even started to believe in himself. But is the message any good? Before we answer that question, let's ask if it is entertaining. The answer has to be, yes. Bill Talen is no Aaron Barschak, causing public disruption for the sake of it or begging for recognition. Firstly, he's actually funny. An accomplished entertainer, his puns and loaded lines are devilishly perfected. Visually, he looks like a slightly scary caricature of Elvis, shock of blonde hair balancing precariously on a less than angelical face. Wife Savitri coaches him before delivering the gospel: "Keep your eyes open really wide as you say that . . ." Secondly, he can persuade people he loves them before tearing them to shreds. A sort of Ali G on coke. Let us sing to the Lord, he exhorts on people's doorstep at Yuletide. He hands them a carol sheet. After a traditional start, they realise the lyrics they are singing have been altered. Firstly to damn with praise, then to excoriate. Big businesses, and the shopping sprees that support them, cast into hell. His tour bus meets local churchmen who think he's a holy crusader. Disneyworld-goers think he's part of the entertainment - till he gets arrested. Billy has been arrested many, many times.

Thirdly (just like the many churches, sceptics might argue), he pulls people in with enough factoids to convince them he knows what he's talking about. Slave labour in China. The horrors of globalisation. Families facing life-ruining debt brought on by merciless advertising. "Give something that costs nothing!" he exhorts. The highly simplified arguments are enough to arouse the emotions of the Outraged Campaigner in any of us. Enough to grab the brain as it hesitates precariously between thinking and laughter.

Billy walks into a shop and does a 'Laying of Hands' on the cash register. In confessional, he tells a girl she did the right thing for taking a pair of scissors to a dress she was trying on in a store ("It didn't fit"). He 'exorcises' a local Walmart from the nearby graveyard. It's very funny to watch . . . but let's face it, we're laughing at other people's expense. People who are mostly too polite to be as rude as he is to them. Do you want someone disrupting your hard-earned day out at Disneyland? When you're shopping for your kids' Christmas presents, presents you might be lucky enough to afford, do you want a preacher-lookalike telling you it's evil? There is a deep synergy between the Church, Christmas, and the commercialism that mutually reinforces that date in the calendar.

But to more serious issues for a moment. Reverend Billy (or Billy Talen) has his heart in the right place, but this stuff about boycotting goods from sweatshops abroad . . . It has been extensively proved, by trial error sadly, to do more harm than good. It tends to close the sweatshop and drive employees into begging and prostitution. Answers, sadly, are more complex than this juvenile barrage of love-and-peace would have us believe. They involve economic and ethical strategies, not a simple cutting-off of offending parties. Debt reduction is not about preaching the real meaning of Christmas (which Talen, as a strictly lapsed believer, is less than convincing about), but more about education and counselling. His point on 'giving something that you have created, or a song,' maybe gets close. Putting more love than just cash into presents. But his roadshow may be too commercial to sway most film-goers' hearts.

I would hate to be one to judge the Reverend Billy. He might do a Bono and or really make a difference. Or he might just be the lever that lets an ever bigger business concern reinvent itself. That concern, of course, being one of the most powerful financial conglomerates in the USA and the world today: Jesus' church itself.

What Would Jesus Buy premiered tonight at SXSW in Austin, TX in front a crowd over a thousand people at Austin's Paramount theater. It was very well-received by the crowd. After the premiere, the director, producer Morgan Spurlock, Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir all appeared on stage to do a song and take questions.

What Would Jesus Buy is a very funny film with a very serious subject (following in the same sort of path blazed by Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me). The film follows the choir while it tours America between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both the film and Rev. Billy ask Americans to re-examine their values and really the true meaning of Christmas (and Christianity in America) which should be about God's presence in the world, helping the needy, and loving those close to you. The film implies that in today's America people use Christmas to try to buy love with material gifts rather than to really demonstrate true love to their family and friends. Unfortunately, Christmas has become a celebration not of Christianity, but of America's true religious pagan secular materialism.

The film also takes on the American corporations that exploit Christmas buy selling us junk we don't need. It shows how many Americans are addicted to credit card debt. In particular it takes on Disney and Wal-Mart. It specifically points out the harm done by buying stuff at Wal-Mart that was made by kids working in sweatshops at slave wages in the Third World. It also showed how Wal-Mart undermines local businesses and how Disney markets a world of fantasy and illusion. It does all of in a very humorous manner through satirical singing of Christmas songs and attempting to show people the destructive nature of consumerism. The film is an effective message film with an important lesson that Americans need to hear.

Sometimes the film seemed to bury its message under so much humor that the message seemed to get a little lost amidst the attempt to entertain. It also tended to offer a lot more of a critique of globalization and consumerism without really offering clear answers or solutions. Finally, I think its fair to wonder how effective Rev. Billy's techniques are. Most of the spectators watching their antics looked more befuddled and confused than they did convinced by their message.

Nevertheless, despite these weakness, this is an excellent and important film and I hope that many Americans get a chance to view it and learn from it. It raises more questions than it answers, but just starting a discussion of consumerism would be a step in the right direction.

Incidentally, folks who like this film should also check out the 2006 film (now on DVD) "Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren" in which Rev. Billy also appears in a cameo role. It links consumerism to American politics and notes the absurdity that after 9/11 Americans were told that the answer to terrorism was to go shopping or the terrorists would win. Both films approach similar issues in humorous ways.

Bill Talen is wacko! This consumer-activist movie was way funnier than I expected. i went because the issue of celebrating Christmas by shopping is one i relate to. Talen's performance-art shtick acting like a Pentacostal preacher did not bother my Christian sensibilities at all, but there were some pieces of chapter-title artwork that blew my mind: the Holy Mother presenting the Christ Child with a tickle-me-Elmo? They were hysterical, creative, topical, surprising, and provocative in the best way. Some went by fast and I'll have to wait for the DVD release to examine them more carefully. (What WAS that demon doing to those poor doomed shoppers anyway?) Full of great interviews, informative "reporting", and Billy's bizarre antics made this way more entertaining than expected. Enjoy!