- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
83The 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.
-
It's a wickedly effective indictment of America's consumer compulsion, our mindless shopping and the multinational corporations controlling it all.
-
75Encourages viewers to think outside the big box of super stores such as Wal-Mart.
-
75The 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.
-
75Steeped 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.
-
75Entertaining and eye-opening.
-
Much like Spurlock's hit "Super Size Me," this production is slick, well-paced, and tremendously entertaining.
-
70Loud, proud and cheeky, the film runs roughshod over corporate behemoths Disney, Starbucks and Wal-Mart as it preaches a sermon of simplicity and consumer awareness.
-
70Must-see viewing for anyone who thinks of Christmas as just a mall and its night visitors.
-
The movie has a sharp point -- Americans shop too much -- but it's a problem that its bellowing hero, always accompanied by his red-robed Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, is so off-putting; a crazy guy who wouldn't sound so crazy if he just didn't act so crazy.
-
63Fairly entertaining, repetitive exhortations of a televangelist who looks like Kurt Russell playing Elvis Presley with 12 additional teeth.
-
60Despite effective moments, VanAlkemade's film is too diffuse. He gives us snippets of the group's spirited performances, but their effect on audiences remains unclear.
-
60At the very least, the documentary What Would Jesus Buy? might make a viewer think twice about that next purchase at the Gap.
-
50You know that deflated feeling you get after you've spent a lot of time and money shopping - and have little to show for your efforts? This disappointing biography, about performance artist Reverend Billy, does an awfully good job recreating it.
-
True believers make for sloppy documentarians and that What Would Jesus Buy? is stuck in neutral because of its director's almost total lack of intellectual and psychological curiosity.
-
33It's neither conceptually bold nor slyly satirical when Billy dresses up as a Southern evangelical and sings made-up hymns about "the shopacalypse."
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 2 out of 3
-
Mixed: 0 out of 3
-
Negative: 1 out of 3
-
FrankC3
-
EB10
-
MatthewR.10