FILM FRENZY

“Jesus Christ” and Rick Pamplin in The Jesus Tapes (Photos: Atlas Distribution)

By Matt Brunson

THE JESUS TAPES
★★½ (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Rick Pamplin
STARS Rick Pamplin

It was 49 years ago when Hollywood released Oh, God!, a disarming comedy in which an elderly gentleman (played by George Burns) appeared out of nowhere claiming to be God. A similar scenario informs The Jesus Tapes, in which a younger man appears out of nowhere claiming to be the Son of God. As before, the skeptics outweigh the true believers.

The movie takes the “found footage” route, as some videocassettes located in a storage facility contain three episodes of a PBS-style talk show on which the guest claims to be Jesus Christ. The film centers not only around those interviews between “Jesus” and the program’s host but also on the surrounding controversy caused by the individual’s claims. Reporters seemingly spend every waking hour asking the locals whether they believe this to be a hoax or the real deal, while the station personnel decide how best to handle this publicity (the picture’s most embarrassing scene finds the owner frothing at the mouth as he explains in Gordon Gekko fashion how greed is good and money is the true God).

The Jesus Tapes is a real oddity, polished in one moment and amateurish in the next. The acting is for the most part atrocious, with easily the best performance coming from the person who plays the program host — since the movie offers no credits (to better conceal the identity of the person who plays the Christ character), it wasn’t until after my viewing that I learned said interviewee was played by the film’s writer-director, Rick Pamplin. The conversations between “Jesus” and the host sometimes grow repetitious, but Pamplin serves as a likable audience surrogate, and, at any rate, these bits are easier to take than the countless man-on-the-street interludes, which offer little variance.

With its holding pattern of “is he or isn’t he?” arguments, the first half can occasionally be quite the slog. The picture improves in the second half, as, in the old Citizen Kane tradition, years pass, fates are determined, and an intrepid reporter tries to make sense of it all.

Yet the movie’s strongest asset, and what earns it the mildest of recommendations, is its open-mindedness and its generosity of spirit. Many would tag The Jesus Tapes a faith-based flick, and in a sense, it is. Yet unlike most works that fall under that tag, this one isn’t smug or sanctimonious, and it doesn’t claim to have all the answers — or any of the answers, for that matter. Except for one small inaccuracy regarding The Last Temptation of Christ*, it’s honest in its approach and in its examinations. To its credit, it seeks to teach, not preach.

* A character states that a publicist hired a Baptist preacher and his congregation to protest The Last Temptation of Christ to create controversy and box office receipts, but that’s not accurate. While Universal Studios did do its best to fan the flames of the controversy for the sake of publicity, the protests were entirely real, organized by evangelists and leading to death threats against director Martin Scorsese and a bombing by Catholic zealots of a Paris theater showing the film (thankfully no deaths, but a few injuries). A far better (and more accurate) story is that the thousands of people who showed up at Universal Studios to protest the picture had to use the studio parking lot, resulting in these nitwits paying Universal approximately $4,500 in parking fees for the privilege of protesting their picture!