Wonky 'Honk': Excellent performances by Hall, Brown lighten middling satire on disgraced megachurch televangelists

“Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.” - ★ ★ ★

Can there possibly be an easier target for a savage satirical comedy than sexually disgraced megachurch televangelists?

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (2021) already established how quickly real-life evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker devolved into cliched caricatures of insanely materialistic, hyper-hypocritical megachurch leaders.

Lee-Curtis and Trinitie Childs, the embattled Baptist power couple in Adamma Ebo's “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” can barely compete with the Bakkers for cartoony excess. If anything, “Honk for Jesus” feels almost too real to qualify as satire.

Fortunately for Ebo - who wrote this screenplay based on her own film short - stars Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall pump their main couple so full of immediacy, nuance and conflict that they - along with their frequent forced laughter and fake smiles - transform a middling movie into a more compelling experience.

“Honk for Jesus” begins after allegations of sexual impropriety against Lee-Curtis have already torpedoed the Welcome to Greater Paths Baptist Church, sending all but five of its 25,000 members scurrying over to a new up-and-coming megachurch, Heaven's House, run by married pastors Keon and Shakira Sumpter (Conphidance and Nicole Beharie).

Determined to make a biblical comeback, Lee-Curtis convinces himself that he can return to the pulpit unscathed by scandal.

He has a tougher time convincing his wife, who, through all of the humiliation and public scrutiny, remains committed to Tammy Wynette's “Stand By Your Man” philosophy.

Brown molds Lee-Curtis as a master showman (he even announces “Showtime!” before services) totally unaware of how transparent his ego, material lust and perversion of Christian goals are to others.

Meanwhile, Hall violates the holy 8th Commandment by quietly stealing this motion picture with a transcendent performance plumbing the depths of a woman struggling to give her man the benefit of every doubt, until those doubts eat away at the last remnants of her loyalty and faithfulness.

Not content with a straightforward satire, Ebo adds a Christopher Guest-like mockumentary device that proves to be both a major blessing and a venial narrative sin.

The Childs allow a never-seen documentary filmmaker named Anita to chronicle their anticipated return to religious glory. We wind up watching both the movie that Ebo makes, plus the interior doc that Anita is shooting.

Which is which?

The key to keeping them straight: When the film frames are in super widescreen, we're watching Ebo's movie. When the frames are in a narrower aspect ratio, we're looking at Anita's doc footage.

Then, Ebo shoots old newsreel footage of the Childs in Academy ratio, the nearly square dimensions of a 20th-century TV tube.

So, keep your eyes on the size and you will realize a surprise: Anita completely misses a key contentious confrontation between Lee-Curtis and one of his abused former church members (Austin Crute) on the sidewalk outside of Greater Paths.

At a relatively short 98 minutes, “Honk for Jesus” slightly overstays its welcome by including redundant scenes that could have been cut or cut down, especially an oddly off-putting pantomime in which Trinitie ploys jazz hands and whiteface makeup while obeying her husband's command to “Shake it for the Lord!”

Are the Childs total charlatans in denial? Or do they really believe they can improve the Christian lives of their flock if given a second chance?

Had they been the latter, Lee-Curtis and Trinitie could have earned our hearts, despite their considerable vacuous shortcomings.

But as they sit on literal gold thrones and jubilantly pose with $2,000 hats, Prada suits, luxury sports cars and vast shoe collections, the duo winds up facing a bitterly ironic twist of fate, one precipitated by an unexpected act of compassion that the two are no longer capable of understanding.

Starring: Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown, Austin Crute, Conphidance, Nicole Beharie

Directed by: Adamma Ebo

Other: A Focus Features release in theaters and streaming on Peacock. Rated R for language, sexual situations. 98 minutes