What Would Jesus Buy?

Let’s have a moratorium on the no-longer-clever “What Would Jesus” whatever, OK? The irony, the hypocrisy, the spiritual bankruptcy: We get it. For that matter, maybe it really is time for us, as a people, to think seriously about controlling the flow of state-the-obvious documentaries. All of which is a blunt and cheeky way of pointing out that you can guess most of what director Rob VanAlkemade and producer Morgan “Super Size Me” Spurlock’s blunt and cheeky documentary has to say: that we shop too much. Inevitably, it’s a talking-head fest, sampling a range of wise or funny or self-incriminating comments from shoppers of various dispositions, street people, put-upon salespeople, shrinks, historians, spoiled kids, shopping-addicted kids, and deeply irritating cable-newscast quipsters who are so obviously part of the problem. The best testimony, though, comes from the witty, with-it Reverend Billy, of the Church of Stop Shopping, for whom “Mickey Mouse is the anti-Christ!” and the “shopacalypse” is at hand. He’s like the open-mic poetry champion you love to hate, and the movie, too broad and slick and easy, should be specifically about him.