Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. Shoots Fish in a Barrel

The people behind Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. have gotta be ecstatic that a video of a Kansas City pastor calling his congregation “poor, broke, busted and disgusted” for not getting him an expensive watch has recently gone viral. You know the filmmakers are thinking the people who have been clowning this video on social media will hopefully take a chance on their movie. However, that brief clip succinctly (and inadvertently hilariously) breaks down what Honk spends an hour-and-40-some-odd minutes trying to satirize.

With Honk, twin filmmakers Adamma and Adanne Ebo take their 15-minute 2018 short film of the same name and expand it to feature length, even getting Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya on board as producers. Stars/producers Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall step in as the central couple, an Atlanta pastor and his loyal wife, who are trying to make a comeback after a very public, very indecent scandal had them losing followers and closing up their church. They even have to deal with a rival, more progressive husband-and-wife pastor team (Nicole Beharie and Conphidance) who are opening up a new church.

Just like the short, the movie is done in mockumentary fashion. But Honk also throws in moments when the “documentary” cameras aren’t filming, giving us Larry Sanders-esque scenes in which the real shit goes down. (We know this because the aspect ratio changes on screen whenever said real shit happens.)

Brown and Hall do bring their A-game, creating a flashy, deluded chemistry as partners-in-crime scheming to get their flock back, doing such ass-backwards stunts as starting up a “roadside ministry” and getting passing motorists to honk in praise. (For some reason, this movie seems to be set in an alternate universe where there is no internet, and no one uses the World Wide Web for immediate publicity.) Both actors have monologue-filled moments that actually elicit sympathy for these poor souls. But then you remember that these characters are heavily in denial about the damage they’re causing to everyone and each other. The Ebo twins don’t know whether to take pity on them or vilify them for the materialistic heathens that they are. 

As much as you can tell the Ebos wanted to make a Christopher Guest movie in the hood, Honk may be the most shooting-fish-in-a-barrel movie you’ll see this year. Everyone should know by now that swagged-out preachers are the most corrupt hypocrites out there, easy to take shots at. Hell, I’m from Houston — home to Joel Osteen’s megachurch, which has been known to keep money stored in its bathroom walls.

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. seems to think it’s breaking new ground by revealing how Black, so-called men of the cloth are taking money and destroying lives in their own communities. But these days, all you have to do is scroll through YouTube and/or TikTok and see actual Black men of the cloth doing it in real time.