A typical Saturday Night Live sketch lasts about five minutes. That’s just enough time to get in your premise, your broadly drawn characters, their funny hair and clothing, a few quality zings and – if we’re being honest – a moment or two of awkward miscalculations. Jared Hess, the director of the unexpected indie success Napoleon Dynamite and, more recently, the wretched Gentlemen Broncos, seems to think he has the goods to break this rule. Comedy is, of course, subjective, but atrocious storytelling is undeniable. This (alleged) satire of a Bible-belt huckster getting in-too-deep with a pair of rival churches is idiotic and unfocused, and sitting through its tedium is a sufferance more befitting of Job. I’d call it offensive to religious people, but it’s too inept to even pull that off.
Sam Rockwell stars as Don Verdean, whose poorly produced DVDs show him finding things like the shears used to cut Samson’s hair under some dirt in Israel. He tours America’s churches in a trailer with his gal Friday, Carol (Amy Ryan), a true believer and the only nice person in the movie, but still on the receiving end of the movie’s simpering cruelty. (When our “hero” Don tries to recreate David’s bout with Goliath he ends up hurling a rock at her gut, and barely apologises.) It’s lean times for Don until he gets a call from a pastor named Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride, still a welcome face), a former toughie whose conversion seems genuine, although he is worried about losing his flock to a satanist-turned-preacher down the block (Will Forte). Lazarus decides to bankroll Verdean on new expeditions.
What this really means is Verdean calling up Boaz (Jermaine Clement), his man in Israel who, over the braying of camels, offers up artefacts like the newly discovered “Lot’s wife” as if he’s selling cameras on West 34th St. One lie leads to another, and soon Don, Boaz and Carol (unwittingly) are passing off the grave-robbed head of Johnny Jerusalem (an Israeli wrestler with gigantism) as that of the Book of Samuel’s Goliath. Meanwhile, Will Forte’s snivelling preacher smells an ecclesiastical rat and, between absurd sermons about the evil lurking in each spoonful of breakfast cereal, hatches a plot to catch Don redhanded.
What’s so frustrating (other than the total absence of jokes) is the movie’s indecision over whether to make its characters loathsome creeps or well-meaning guys who get in over their heads. Lazarus is a dunce, but he wants to spread the Gospel to his flock. Verdean might feel the same way, but Hess’ direction makes it impossible to tell. It isn’t nuance, it’s being tone-deaf. Rockwell plays everything broad, and the pursuit of every cheap laugh ensures the character stays a cartoon. Again, this is how you do it in sketch comedy, but someone should have been there to rein him in. Jared Hess is more interested in getting as many funny-looking side characters with ludicrous haircuts in the frame rather than telling a story.
Jemaine Clement, a marvellous comic actor, is left similarly adrift. Boaz is a lovable goof at first, with a preposterous Israeli accent that, when he gets angry, sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger running out of oxygen in Total Recall. But a movie needs its stakes raised, so he’s clumsily turned into a baddie (and a Jewish stereotype, to boot, but I’ll give Hess the benefit and say he’s too much of a putz to be intentionally malicious.) By the end we’re left with no one to root for, except for the eventual deliverance of the closing credits.
Actors, we must always remember, are freelancers. When a paying gig comes up that looks fun (Danny McBride on board for a week!) and easy (mostly indoor sets) it’s silly for us to pretend we’d say no if we were in their shoes. Point is, let’s not judge Rockwell, Clement and Ryan, even if it’s their faces we see up on the screen. The con artists are Jared Hess and his screenwriting partner (and wife) Jerusha Hess. Let’s hope they’re less successful in pawning off their next fraud.
• Don Verdean is released in the US on 11 December
