Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul (2022)

Despite the prodigious talents of Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall as a narcissistic pastor and his tightly wound wife trying to resurrect their Black Evangelical church after a scandal, this mockumentary's pacing is wildly uneven. There are plenty of laughs and the wardrobe is spectacular, however. Maybe the long pauses are meant to underscore the cringe (and Jack and I usually love cringe) or to reflect the documentary style, but the story seems to come to a crashing halt from time to time. Nicole Beharie and Conphidance play the attractive, younger heads of a competing church.

Director/screenwriter Adamma Ebo fleshed out her 2018 short of the same name to make this feature with the aid of the Sundance Institute and producers Daniel Kaluuya, Jordan Peele, and Ebo's twin sister Adanne Ebo, among others.

The soundtrack album, composed by Marcus Norris and featuring the Southside Symphony, is available to stream on Apple Music and likely elsewhere.

Another interesting production value, besides the costumes designed by Lorraine Coppin, is that different aspect ratios are used to demonstrate which scenes are from the documentary within the movie, "archive" footage, and "real life."

Brown was last blogged for Black Panther, Hall for Shaft, and Beharie for Miss Juneteenth. Conphidance may be new to me but is no stranger to stage, screen, and music studio. This is Adamma Ebo's feature directorial debut and her sister was associate producer on one other feature, besides shorts for both. Norris also makes his feature debut and Coppin has dozens of previous credits.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics aren't exactly honking at 72%, while its audiences took a detour, averaging 26%. Jack's and my opinion falls somewhere in between. We streamed it with our Peacock+ subscription on September 2.