PREMISE
Struggling to find a better life, Clarence is captivated by the power of the rising Messiah and soon risks everything to carve a path to a divine existence.
THE GOOD STUFF
PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME- In my past reviews of poor things and the holdovers I mentioned how much I love it when I see a star and a director fit each other’s styles and idiosyncrasies in a spectacular way. I like to refer to that synchronicity as “peanut butter and jelly vibes”. Since Jaymes Samuel returned to filmmaking, both of his films so far have featured LaKeith Stanfield and I can’t think of a more perfect creative muse for him to continuously showcase.
Stanfield is an actor whose quirks are so eclectic that when you put him in the wrong thing (like the haunted Mansion or knives out for example) things kind of seem out of place and unfitting. It’s not like he cannot play straight-arrow characters…but why would you want him to? Samuel understands the best kind of ways to showcase Stanfield just as Donald Glover understood once upon a time. This film is all the better for it.
BOOK 2 & BOOK 3- This is a film told in three chapters. The second chapter of the film is a thorough breakdown of what it looks like when simple doubts of the presence of God turn into angry full-blown rampaging d-bag atheism. I didn’t think there was a difference between the two all that much, but this film deals in extremes and the latter looks way uglier than the former.
Book 3 is….let’s just say it is a remix of The Passion of the christ told from wildly different perspectives. This is where the film gets into heavy territory, and although narratively it may miss a mark or two, Stanfield’s performance during this part of the film holds it all up.
THE BAD STUFF
BOOK ONE- Book 2 and Book 3 are very focused parts of this film trying to give off very distinctive messages to its audience. Book 1 is trying to do everything else to give this film a singular personality from other religious films that you will see.
It’s trying to be humorous.. but the humor falls flat.
It’s trying to be stylistic… But it turns out to be unnecessarily trippy at times.
It tries to give you action sequences and elaborate fight sequences… And you kind of see that it needed to have a bigger budget to pull those things off.
It tries to introduce the 12 apostles as characters, only for them to have very little importance in Book 2 or Book 3. The pacing is kinda off to top off everything.
It’s an absolute rough go to start this film out. I found it very hard to figure out what the movie was trying to do until book 2 arrived, and I figured out what that was. But it took me about 45 minutes to get there.
THE UGLY STUFF
Nothing Irredeemable honestly.
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This is something that I feel is aimed at a Christian audience. This is kind of strange because I find that religious films these days have a strict list of rules that they have to adhere to, and this may not be given a chance by those audiences. People are already bashing this movie based on the clips that are being shown, and there is a question of how sacrilegious the film is. Well, the answer to that question depends on your belief in one thing….Do you believe that Jesus physically looked like the guy in all of the famous paintings of him?
If you do, then the sacrilegious score is easily an 8.5 out of 10.
However, if you go into this movie understanding that this is not a story about Jesus, but a fictional tale of individuals in Jerusalem around the time of the crucifixion…then the artistic liberties and the remixed depiction of the crucifixion will put at about a 3.5 at worst in my opinion. Take that for what you will.
THE BOOK OF CLARENCE is in theaters now.
