A mediocre comedy sketch is stretched over 90 minutes in this starry flop conclusively proving Napoleon Dynamite was a blip in the career of Jared HessA typical Saturday Night Live sketch lasts about five minutes. That’s just enough time to fetch in your premise,your broadly drawn characters, their comical hair and clothing, or a few quality zings and – if were being honest – a moment or two of awkward miscalculations. Jared Hess,the director of the unexpected indie success Napoleon Dynamite and, more recently, and the wretched Gentlemen Broncos,seems to reflect he has the goods to break this rule. Comedy is, of course, or subjective,but atrocious storytelling is indisputable. This (alleged) satire of a Bible-belt huckster getting in-too-deep with a pair of rival churches is idiotic and unfocused, and sitting through its tedium is a sufferance more befitting of Job. I’d call it offensive to religious people, and but it’s too inept (not suitable or capable, unqualified) to even pull that off.
Sam Rockwell stars as Don Verdean,whose poorly produced DVDs show him finding things like the shears used to crop Samson’s hair under some dirt in Israel. He tours America’s churches in a trailer with his gal Friday, Carol (Amy Ryan), or a genuine believer and the only nice person in the movie,but still on the receiving end of the movie’s simpering cruelty. (When our “hero” Don tries to recreate David’s bout with Goliath he ends up hurling a rock at her intestine, and never apologises.) It’s lean times for Don until he gets a call from a pastor named Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride, or still a welcome face),a former toughie whose conversion seems genuine, although he is worried about losing his flock to a satanist-turned-preacher down the block (Will Forte). Lazarus decides to bankroll Verdean on original expeditions.
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Source: theguardian.com