There have been some excellent comedies centered around Jesus Christ’s life and times. I’m thinking of movies like the Monty Python romp The Life of Brian or the comedic novel Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. The key seems to be to treat Jesus largely respectfully but point out the comedic foibles of the ordinary people living around Him. To that end, the new movie The Book of Clarence set up a simple premise as seen in the trailer: a con man played by the charming LaKeith Stanfield sees Jesus Christ in action and decides that playing at being a Messiah could earn him a nice paycheck. It sounded like a really good concept to me.
OK, it came out in the first half of January, and that’s never a good sign. But maybe the movie would rise above any such expectations that release date might suggest.
Clarence, a hustler living in Jerusalem in 33AD, owes a lot of money to local crime boss Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) after losing a chariot race to Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor). He and his best friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) mostly steal honeyed wine from the Romans and sell marijuana, but Clarence has some real issues. First, he’s in love with Jedediah’s sister Varinia (Anna Diop), but he’s also the only one taking care of his mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) after his identical twin brother Thomas (Stanfield again) became one of Jesus’s 12 Apostles. Having a month to find a way to repay Jedediah, or else, Clarence decides he needs protection but also perhaps a way to raise the money he needs, all while maybe finding a way to give his mother the life he thinks she deserves and make himself worth of Varinia.
To that end, he figures the way to go is to do like Jesus (Nicholas Pinnock) and call himself the Messiah, Fake some miracles, preach some sermons, and the coins are bound to come rolling in. Clarence himself is an atheist, but together with Elijah, cart driver Dirty Zeke (Caleb McLaughlin), and freed slave Barabbus (Omar Sy), he soon finds the success he needs. Or is he? Clarence finds himself reflecting on his life and what he sees all around. Could it be that pretending to be the Messiah is actually making Clarence a better person?
So, I really wanted to like this movie. The premise is something I find a good potential source for humor, and the way writer/director Jeymes Samuel set things up–with the locals of Jerusalem largely being played by black actors with American accents while the Romans are all white actors with British accents–suggests commentary on modern policing and the like while also exploring the idea of belief, knowledge, and faith. The problem is I find the timing often off. There’s a lot of good potential humor in the movie, but Samuel doesn’t seem to take enough time to set jokes up. Factor in as well that Benedict Cumberbatch is there playing a beggar, and it took a while for me to recognize him, but his whole presence seems to be to set up a joke (admittedly a good one), but also one that had a somewhat disturbing implication in the role Jesus played in this man’s life. There’s also a pretty good speech about the nature of racism at one point, and the biggest problem I had with it was who delivered it. It’s the sort of thing where something is set up, but the payoff just doesn’t work.
But there are some genuinely good moments, such as when Alfre Woodard pops up as the Virgin Mary. The humor in the scene is good, and Woodard is a veteran who knows how to carry herself with the right amount of gravitas. The scene between Mary, Clarence, and Joseph (Brian Bovell) is the movie at its best. Like David Oyelowo’s John the Baptist, this is the character’s only scene, and Woodard makes the most of it. But the final moment has a punchline where the timing was just a bit off, and just as the scene started with such promise, it ended with the same issues as the rest of the movie. Like I said, I wish I could have enjoyed this movie. There was a lot of promise and potential, but in the end, that’s all there was.
Grade: C
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