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Special Guest Reviewer: Jesus H. Christ

Hey, gang! Jesus here! The whole Easter season is coming right up (Can you believe it’s been 2008 years already? I know, I know, time flies, right?) so I thought I’d take this opportunity to give you my thoughts on a little movie called The Passion of the Christ. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Basically what happened was, Mel Gibson decided he could reach Christians everywhere, or whatever, if he made a movie all about my crucifixion. A for effort, I guess, Mel, but could you have picked something more of a bummer? That whole thing was easily the worst day of my life! The Sermon on the Mount, now that was a good day. Once I made a pair of really handsome shelves for these cute young newlyweds. And remember the loaves and fishes? A little flashier than my usual style, but it was still pretty good, right? Any of those would have been a much better thing to focus on, am I right? Those would have showcased what I was all about, you know—being nice to people, feeding the hungry, interior design, all that good stuff. Isn’t that more pleasant than the oogy business about the one time I got nailed to a tree?

In fact, maybe the movie should have been about all those other things. Maybe then it could have told a complete story, given the audience a sense of who I was, left them with a feeling of “Jesus: Basically a Good Egg.” Who wouldn’t like to be remembered like that? I have to say this movie is a little too narrow in scope. I’m all about giving peole the whole story, not making them come in at Act III. When I watched this movie, I tried to put myself in the perspective of someone who didn’t know anything about me. It’s quite an experience! They must be thinking “Who is this guy? Why should I care? What’s the point of all this unpleasantness?” Leaving your audience baffled might be okay for Kubrick (I’ve been asking him about the whole monolith thing from the moment he got here and he still won’t tell me) but I don’t think that’s what Mel Gibson wanted. You know what watching this movie’s like? It’s like you’re watching The Green Mile and it starts with Michael Clarke Duncan sitting down in the chair, Tom Hanks says “For the crime of murder, you’ve been sentenced to death by electrocution,” they pull the switch and then it’s over. A little bit thin, eh? You miss out on all the important stuff! (Just as an aside, we’ve got a killer theater up here, and I’m a total sucker for those Frank Darabont prison pictures.)

So what did Mel Gibson want to say with this movie? Frankly, I don’t know. The way it plays out, it seems like his whole point must have just been to guilt trip people into being better Christians with his whole “Oh, wasn’t that awful” way of doing things. Excuse me, Mel, but guilt trips? That is so totally not my scene. Personally, I’m not about that. Making people feel bad or strongarming them into packing the pews on Sunday morning? No thanks! I’m just throwing this out there, but doesn’t it seem like that kind of undermines my whole message?

Now, I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the violence level in The Passion of the Christ was just too extreme. It certainly was a violent picture, no doubt about that, and I wouldn’t recommend letting your young ‘uns watch it. But I think it was Roger Ebert who said the movie deserved an NC-17 rating, and I can’t say I agree with that. In terms strictly of gore presented, there’s less than in a lot of horror movies, or in something like Saving Private Ryan. But the thing is, the blood and stuff they show you doesn’t serve any purpose. It’s exactly what people mean when they talk about the gratuitous violence in modern cinema. Because you don’t really learn anything about me or what I stand for, this movie basically exists as a showcase of torture, nothing but violence for its own sake. And this may surprise you, but that’s fine with me, guys! It’s not exactly my cup of tea, but I’m not gonna tell you not to do it. I don’t want to stifle any artist’s free expression, because that can start you down a pretty nasty slippery slope. But I hope people will just realize that that’s what this movie is, a celebration of abuse, and not start giving it all these layers that just aren’t there.

Now sometimes, when a movie is groundbreaking or innovative or just stylistically exciting, we’re willing to at least separate the technical achievement from the deplorable content even though we don’t excuse it. I remember when The Birth of a Nation came out, we got a print up here and I said to one of the archangels, “You know, Griffith’s got so much talent it blows my mind, I just wish he didn’t have to be such a jerk all the time, if you’ll pardon my French.” So we can still condemn that movie’s story as a racist diatribe (Gems from Jesus: Racism is not cool) but acknowledge how much it advanced the art of filmmaking. Unfortunately, in The Passion of the Christ there’s nothing particularly exciting about the direction or the cinematography or any of that stuff. It’s completely average in that sense, so for me at least nothing took my attention away from the fact that Mel Gibson must seriously love to watch people get brutalized. That’s downright creepy, isn’t it?

I guess what I’m basically saying is, I like a movie about me to celebrate my life, not dwell on my death. Like one o’ those New Orleans funerals with the jazz bands. Hey, it’s been great talking with you, but I do have some work to do, plus tonight I’m in the semi-finals of the ping pong tournament we’ve got up here. I’m up against Eli Whitney, and that guy’s serve has a killer topspin. Gotta practice!

See you in the funny papers!

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