Movie review: 'What Would Jesus Buy?'

Reverend Billy in "What Would Jesus Buy?" (Credit: Warrior Poets)

3 stars (out of four)

Well, it’s a week after Black Friday, which leads us to the obvious question: Are you tired? I mean tired of all the shameless hucksterism that seems to define Christmas? Tired of the annual three-month-long orgy of spending and selling, of the eternal financial hangover that inevitably follows? Are you tired, people? Can I get an “Amen?”

Those of you who just shouted “amen!” are hereby advised to take a deep, cleansing breath, put down the coffee and make immediate plans to see “What Would Jesus Buy?” It’s a wickedly effective indictment of America’s consumer compulsion, our mindless shopping and the multinational corporations controlling it all.

“WWJB,” a documentary produced by Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”), follows Reverend Billy and members of his Church of Stop Shopping on their Christmastime journey across America. Traveling the country in their bio-diesel buses, they preach the gospel of putting away one’s wallet to throngs of confused, bargain-hunting shoppers at mega-malls and Wal-Marts. In the last 50 years, the U.S. has gone from global producer to global consumer. And we’ve got the overflowing landfills and crippling credit card debt to prove it.

What could have been a bone-dry exercise in dogmatism is instead a witty, abrasive and hugely entertaining romp, thanks to director Rob VanAlkemade. Credit is also due to Reverend Billy, the alter ego of Billy Talen, who, after watching in horror as Disney took over his neighborhood (New York’s Times Square), decided to mimic the local street preachers, the only people being heard over the commercial din. Since launching his crusade in 1997, Reverend Billy has been banned from 130,000 Starbucks worldwide, as well as from every Disney property. He has also added the 35-member Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir to his routine, a Baptist-style event delivered with all the evangelical, red-faced zeal you’d expect from a man who earnestly believes the world is plunging headlong toward what he calls “The Shopocalypse.”

Interviews with crazy-eyed shoppers make it clear that salvation, or whatever you want to call a saner approach to gift-giving, isn’t going to be easy. Thanks to decades of devilishly effective marketing, and $15 billion in annual advertising to kids, Christmas retail is now inextricably linked to the idea of love. The more you love, the logic goes, the bigger the gift.
 
x  Academic and religious experts line up to explain how Christmas, which began as a modest religious celebration, has spiraled out of control into the purely consumerist bonanza we experience today, fueled by Americans’ increasing social isolation and emotional emptiness. We spend, they explain, to compensate for what we’ve lost, or what we never had.x  
But the consumers themselves say it best: Everybody wants something, and they want it now. Never mind where it’s made, or what conditions the workers live in. Just buy it, dump the packaging ... and start warming up for the post-Christmas sales.

jreaves@tribune.com

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