Christmas-Reviewer
Review Date 1/26/2018PLEASE BEWARE OF SOME REVIEWERS THAT ONLY HAVE ONLY ONE REVIEW. WHEN ITS A POSITIVE THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE THEY WERE INVOLVED WITH THE PRODUCTION. NOW I HAVE NO AGENDA! I REVIEW MOVIES & SPECIALS AS A WAY TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT I HAVE SEEN! I HAVE DISCOVERED MANY GEMS IN MY QUEST TO SEE AS MANY " C H R I S T M A S " MOVIES AS I CAN. Now Someone keeps reporting my reviews. I guess they are jealous because I do tell the truth. I want to point out that I never make snide remarks about actors weight or real life sexual orientation. If there acting is terrible or limited "I talk about that". If a story is bad "I will mention that" So why am I being "picked on"? IMDB? When one of my reviews gets deleted IMDB will not even tell me what someone found offensive. Well on to this review.This film has a message but it is lost with this mans screaming and grand standing. What isn't covered in this is that there are many people like myself that don't overspend and love the Christmas Season. To me "Christmas Season" is my football season. "Christmas" helps me get through the rest of the year. Christmas is a time of living (for me) guilt free.The Rev. Billy Tallen and his Stop Shopping Choir embark on a cross-country crusade against the commercialization of Christmas is a good cause but isn't this film also made "To Make Money" and to spread the Billy Tallen's message?Now many people in the USA are not Church Goers but love Christmas. Christmas brings many people together and that is worth celebrating.Yes Americans overspend but they don't just overspend at Christmas. That is another point that is overlooked! It would have also helped if the Rev do not look like Heat Miser from "The Year without a Santa Claus"
MrMajestik
Really don't understand the low ratings of this doc... I saw this several years ago and was touched by its creative message, the enlightenment to our insane consumer society, and if you don't think you are just a pawn of the oppressor then you ARE! Stop buying so much and invest in relationships and values! US has clearly lost it way and this doc points out they hypocrisy in modern consumerist America. Here are some more great docs for those who care: 1) Consuming Kids 2) Affluenza 3) Advertising and the end of the world 4) The Corporation 5) What a way to go: Life at the End of EmpireIf you watch these you may be able to turn the tide on our social, moral, and environmental destruction... What would Jesus Buy? fits right in with them ... "We must become the change we want to see." Gandhi
Roland E. Zwick
The Reverend Billy is clearly a man on a mission: namely, to convince American consumers to tear up their credit cards and stop shopping. Since the Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil, the right good reverend has taken it upon himself to preach the gospel of No Shopping to a world drowning in a sea of Madison Avenue marketing and debt. His congregation even calls itself the Church of Stop Shopping, and every Christmas season, his devoted flock fans out to local malls and shopping centers to preach against the evils of consumerism and to lead exhausted and beleaguered shoppers to redemption.Rob VanAlkemade's "What Would Jesus Buy?" is a lively and colorful documentary that follows the CCS and its leader as they travel around the country spreading the word to the masses. In the prologue, we're informed that, whereas America "used to be a nation of producers, now we're a nation of consumers." Our savings rate stands at zero, as we groan under mounds of ever-increasing personal debt. Psychologists, in fact, estimate that 15 million Americans may be "clinically addicted" to shopping, and we're told that the nation's citizens spend five times more time shopping in stores (and now on the internet) than praying in church.This is the situation that Reverend Billy is hell-bent on rectifying. Part religious zealot and part crowd-pleasing showman, Revered Billy is in the time-honored tradition of all those big-haired, fire-and-brimstone preachers who stand on street corners or in the pulpits of churches thunderously decrying the evils of the world and offering personal salvation – only, in his case, it's salvation from the demonic forces of wanton spending. Combining a social message with street-theater and performance art antics like singing anti-commercial Christmas carols to bemused and befuddled audiences, Reverend Billy and his minions have been arrested numerous times for invading retail stores in an attempt to bring a halt to the commerce taking place within them. At one point, they even mount an assault on the nation's ultimate shoppers' Mecca, the Mall of America, where countless pilgrims go every year to bow down and worship the almighty god of consumerism. But Reverend Billy saves his greatest opprobrium for the Walt Disney Corporation, which he sees as a false god – even going so far as refer to Mickey Mouse as his own personal antichrist - dedicated to making money at any cost, including exploiting underpaid workers in Third World countries. The movie also slams what has come to be known as the "Walmart-ization" of America, as more and more mom-and-pop retailers are driven out of business by massive corporations whose sole concern is the bottom line and, thus, have no qualms about shipping many of their jobs overseas.This affectionate, humor-filled movie makes us complicit in the group's actions, which means we also get to be present for those rare moments of quiet reflection when the participants question just how many people they are actually converting to their creed. But far more often, we see how nothing – not overzealous security forces, not unresponsive crowd, not even a serious bus accident (at which we are present) – can dampen their commitment to their cause.Of course, the movie, in its passion and zeal for Reverend Billy and what he is advocating, neglects to address the rather obvious counterargument that if people were to stop shopping entirely – especially at Christmas – the economy might come to a screeching halt, resulting in far-reaching harmful consequences for the nation as a whole.Still, it's hard not to buy at least some of what "What Would Jesus Buy?" is selling.
buff-29
Even if you subscribe to the knee-jerk anti-free-trade politics of this movie, it is still just the same tired note, played again and again and again. Clink clink clink. Even if you can accept a preacher with peroxide hair who advocates a return to first principles, the Reverend Billy is pretty hard to look at as a serious figure. The clownish reverend is the sort who wakes every morning with no aspiration more ethereal than to see his own face on TV before he climbs back into bed that night. He has a pretty wife, I have to admit, but it would take tons more than that to save this dreary mess of a movie. The interminable bus rides are the worst part--with progress shown--can you guess?--by a colored line moving across a map. Aww, you guessed. Oh well, it has the virtue of being short. Is that the only favorable thing I can say? Hmmmm. Yep, afraid so.
