Mark Reviews Movies: JESUS REVOLUTION

Jesus Revolution, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 23, 2023

There's a sense of purity to the initial theme and message of Jesus Revolution, which depicts how the "Jesus Movement" of the late 1960s and early 1970s was born out of and tapped into the then-dwindling counter-culture of the era. In other words, a group of hippies decided they'd had enough of some vague spiritual journey and arrived at Christianity as the final destination.

With them, they brought ideas of peace and loving one's neighbor and accepting people for who and what they are, or at least, that's how co-directors Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle's movie depicts the earliest stages of the movement. Once one realizes that all of this would essentially become the foundation of the fundamentalist evangelical strain of Christianity that would go on to influence politics for decades, it's difficult to buy into the sincerity of any of that early material. Indeed, the movie, written by Erwin and Jon Gunn, seems at a loss as to how to explain what the movement's ultimate message and form actually are, considering how far away its reality is from the ideal the movie itself establishes.

We get a trio of central characters, each of whom is or will become a preacher steeped in this movement. The main one, perhaps, is Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), a lost teenager attending military school, caring for an alcoholic mother (played by Kimberly Williams-Paisley), and still holding out hope that the father who left him might come back into his life. The real Laurie co-wrote the book (with Ellen Vaughn) upon which the screenplay is based, and while it makes sense that the Greg of the movie is a vital figure as he tries to figure out his purpose in life, he's mostly a dull non-entity as soon as he does determine all of that. Greg's transformation into the central character here just feels like an obligation on the filmmakers' part.

Another member of the trio is Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), the pastor of a church in California that's struggling to keep up attendance. He's becoming convinced that society or the world is about to collapse, considering all the political division and the prevalence of the counter-culture, and that belief, his teenage daughter Janette (Ally Ioannides) suggests, is why no one wants to go to church—and specifically his—anymore.

The third and final figure is the hippie who coincidentally comes into the lives of Chuck and Greg, in order to teach them a thing or two about love and acceptance and finding one's purpose for a higher power. He's Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), who spent some time in San Francisco searching for some meaning in life by way of drugs and free love, but at the end of that search, he discovered that Jesus is more than just all right with him.

If one wonders why Lonnie is treated with such early reverence and suddenly disappears from the story after becoming an egotist, a little bit of research into his personal life and how the resulting churches that formed from his message handled that will clarify a lot. It especially makes the movie's broad, feel-good attitude much harder to accept, given how much it has to generalize or obfuscate to make that point.

There is something to the early sections of this story, as Lonnie and his simple message cut through Chuck's prejudices, Greg's self-doubt (He even finds love with Cathe, played by Anna Grace Barlow), and the cynicism of both some in the stuffy congregation and his fellow hippies. The movement, like all human institutions, eventually becomes a matter of argument and in-fighting, but instead of giving us some philosophical or theological understanding of the nature of these disagreements, Erwin and Gunn mostly stick to Greg, as he tries to come to terms with his past and what he wants for his future. As a result, the movie never gives us a solid idea of what this movement means, beyond converting a lot of people, or what tangible beliefs it finally formed, especially since all of Lonnie's early preaching is more or less dismissed by his transition into a melodramatic faith-healer.

None of this makes for particularly engaging drama, but then again, it becomes clear that telling a clear, straightforward, and honest story about the history and results of this movement isn't the point. Jesus Revolution muddies and evades so much that it's enough to make one skeptical of the movie's apparent genuineness, message, and intentions.

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