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MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Andrew and Jon Erwin are brothers from Alabama who have been producing faith-based films for the last decade, usually with stories depicting real life events, including music and sports. Their movies are well-produced and present a Christian message without being heavy-handed or preachy.

Jesus Revolution is their latest effort and it tells the story about the birth of the Jesus movement in Southern California beginning in the late 1960s. It all begins with a small church led by Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammar), a sincere pastor whose worship service is visited by Lonnie Frisbee (Roumie), a wandering evangelist who is hitchhiking through the area and picked up by Pastor Smith’s daughter Janette (Ally Ioannides). Since Janette is constantly pulling her dad’s chain about religion, Chuck decides to offer hospitality and a home to Lonnie. There is some initial pushback from some of the members of the congregation, but as more of Frisbee’s disciples make their way to the church, before too long they have a rocking worship service and a reputation that grows the church numerically as well as creating the genre of CCM (contemporary Christian music) and the modern model for worship teams. The church is renamed Calvary Chapel and would become the home base for a network of over 1,000 congregations.

Running parallel is the story of Greg Laurie (Courtney), a rebellious teenager whose interest in getting to know Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow), a neighborhood girl, leads him to a rock festival in which Timothy Leary (Steve Hanks) is preaching the joys of psychedelic drugs. The two experiment with drugs but eventually find themselves uniting with Frisbee for a new life in the Christian community.

I can understand why so many Christians are resonating with the general themes of forgiveness, grace and new beginnings that make up the plot of Jesus Revolution. The acting is fine and the film moves along, covering a lot of ground in two hours.

Still, I left the theater wondering (once again as I often do with faith-based PG-13 films) what is the point of it all? The truly interesting story is the birth of the Calvary Chapel movement, but it’s not here, really. There are no signs of charismatic worship (no speaking in tongues or baptisms in the Holy Spirit). How do you grow a church from a small chapel to a large tent ministry to a megachurch? (You won’t find out here) The producers spent a good chunk of change paying music rights to use songs by The Doobie Brothers, Rare Earth, and The Edgar Winters Group but failed to include much of any music by Christian artists performing in Southern California at the time (including Calvary Chapel’s own worship team, Love Song!) Sad to say, I found Greg Laurie’s story (this is based on his memoir by the same name) fairly boring, inflating his role beyond reality.

The master stroke of Jesus Revolution was casting Jonathan Roumie as Lonnie Frisbee, since Roumie is Jesus in the international hit streaming series The Chosen. I used to think that hippies tried to look like Jesus; now I see that it’s Jesus trying to look like a hippie!

Far out.

Halo and Pitchfork Rating:

Four halos: There’s a positive message about love running throughout this superficial lookback at the early days of the Jesus Freak movement.
Three pitchforks: Scenes of excessive alcohol and drug use that refrain from being celebratory; a scene of a drug overdose, including vomiting.

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