Review: 'Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.' takes on evangelical hypocrisy, with strong performances by Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown

The mock-documentary satire “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” — a punctuation-heavy title — takes some hard swings at hypocrisy and selfishness in a Southern Baptist megachurch, and get in a few good licks thanks to their talented stars, Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown.

Brown and Hall portray Lee-Curtis Childs and his wife, Trinitie, the pastor and “first lady” of a prominent Baptist church in a Georgia city. A documentary crew has been hired to chronicle the preparations for the church’s reopening on Easter Sunday, to return to Lee-Curtis’ suave, charismatic sermons extolling the virtues of following Jesus and warning against temptation — mostly against the “sin,” in Lee-Curtis’ view, of homosexuality.

Lee-Curtis and Trinitie don’t want to discuss with the documentarian about the circumstances that prompted their church to close and their flock to abandon them for other preachers, notably the up-and-coming Shakura and Keon Sumpter (played by Nicole Beharie and the one-named actor Conphidance). But a few clues emerge, slowly at first, that Lee-Curtis was involved in a sex scandal involving young men.

As the opening approaches, both pastor and first lady start to unravel, shifting from passive-aggressive — like when Trinitie re-baptizes Lee-Curtis in the church’s baptismal pool and holds him under a few seconds longer than necessary — into just plain aggressive. The documentarian’s camera (as well as some moments that seem like a documentary crew wouldn’t have been privy to) show how Lee-Childs is out to prove all the doubters wrong, while Trinitie is determined to regain the status that her husband’s misbehavior has cost her.

Writer-director Adamma Ebo (her sister, Adenne, is first among the many producers) captures the telling details of the megachurch life — all the conspicuous spending justified in the name of shipping souls to Jesus, the thinly veiled contempt for other pastors, and the quietly accepted misogyny and hypocrisy that undergirds it all. The observations generate laughs, though with a sting to them that occasionally feels a little too much like shooting fish in a barrel.

The actors playing the not-so-holy Childses make the movie work. Brown’s slick portrayal captures the confidence, bordering on arrogance, that Lee-Curtis can reclaim his spot in the pulpit without ever truly facing up to his sins. And Hall goes even further, showing the lengths to which Trinitie will go — the indignities she will endure — for a chance to get back on top. It’s Brown’s and Hall’s perfectly paired instincts to find the humor and heart in this absurd situation that gives “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” Its power.

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‘Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.’

★★★

Opens Friday, September 2, in theaters, and streaming on Peacock. Rated R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes.