What Would Jesus Buy?

60

Palisades Pictures (90 minutes)
and Rob VanAlkemade
Bill Talen , and Savitri D

Rating: PG for mild language

Summary: From producer Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me") and director Rob VanAlkemade comes a serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas. Bill Talen was a lost idealist who hitchhiked to New York City only to find that Times Square was becoming a mall. Spurred on by the loss of his neighborhood and inspired by the sidewalk preachers around him, Bill bought a collar to match his white caterer's jacket, bleached his hair and became the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Since 1999, Reverend Billy has gone from being a lone preacher with a portable pulpit preaching on subways, to the leader of a congregation and a movement whose numbers are well into the thousands. Through retail interventions, corporate exorcisms, and some good old-fashioned preaching, Reverend Billy reminds us that we have lost the true meaning of Christmas. What Would Jesus Buy? is a journey into the heart of America – from exorcising the demons at the Wal-Mart headquarters to taking over the center stage at the Mall of America and then ultimately heading to the Promised Land … Disneyland. (Palisades Pictures)

Michael Sragow
Baltimore Sun:
(83) The stripped-down filmmaking preserves the abruptness and surprise of the happy (and unhappy) accidents Reverend Billy finds at every stop along the way, from Manhattan to Anaheim.

Jessica Reaves
Chicago Tribune:
(75) It’s a wickedly effective indictment of America’s consumer compulsion, our mindless shopping and the multinational corporations controlling it all.

William Arnold
Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
(75) Entertaining and eye-opening.

Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer:
(75) Encourages viewers to think outside the big box of super stores such as Wal-Mart.

Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide:
(75) Steeped in what may be the ultimate postmodern irony: Talen's impromptu, defiant piece of performance art with political undertones has actually taken on a spiritual dimension.

Walter Addiego
San Francisco Chronicle:
(75) The character isn't just shtick, though. As Billy, Talen has staged many protests in Times Square and anti-shopping "interventions" at retailers, where the managers, to say nothing of the New York police, often have failed to see the humor - he's been arrested dozens of times.

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