Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jesus Revolution’ on VOD, a Faith-Based (But Not TOO Faith-Based) Movie About the Jesus Freaks Movement of the ‘70s (2024)

Jesus Revolution (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) dramatizes the origins of the Jesus freaks, a group of hippie-Christians who inspired a bona-fide nationwide movement in the late 1960s and early ’70s (and a memorable line in Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”). Or, more succinctly, it’s where the hippies and the squares came together in harmony, man. The film is based on the book of the same title by Greg Laurie, a Christian pastor who was inspired to start his own church by the movement’s founders, pastor Chuck Smith and hippie Lonnie Frisbee; it’s directed by Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle, the former having helmed faith-based-but-not-TOO-faith-based movies like Moms’ Night Out and Kurt Warner biopic American Underdog. And maybe that not-too-proselytizing tone is why Jesus Revolution crossed over to the mainstream a little bit during its theatrical release, grossing a modest but not insignificant $51 million (and counting). Now it’s available for the home rental/streaming market, where even more people can watch it not too heavy-handedly push its point-of-view, but still, you know, push its point-of-view.

JESUS REVOLUTION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Title card: BASED ON A TRUE REVOLUTION. Translation: this is a BOATS (Based On A True Story, y’know) movie, except with, like, one word changed. The scene: The California coastline. The sun is brilliant, glorious even. Full of the glory of You Know Who! Especially since it’s shining down on a mass baptism, watched by Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney). Kelsey Grammer, playing pastor Chuck Smith, is waist-deep and dunking believers. “Every regret, every doubt, all washed away forever,” he says. Uh huh. Bit of a dubious claim there, but, as the wise man once said, you gotta have faith-uh faith-uh faith-uh, baby. Cut to ONE YEAR EARLIER: Newport Beach, California, 1968. Greg lives mere steps from the gorgeous beach, in a crappy old trailer with his hot mess of an alcoholic mom. He finishes ironing his shirt, leaves, comes back, pulls the lit cigarette from the hand of his passed-out mother, then leaves again. He goes to military school. He is a SQUARE.

Elsewhere, pastor Chuck has an ideological battle with his daughter Janette (Ally Ioannides), loosely summed up as UGH LOOKIT THOSE GROSS HIPPIES on one side and LOOSEN UP YA SQUARE on the other. Chuck believes that the youth generation is lost, and preaches the sentiment to an increasingly empty church. Then, one fateful day, Janette picks up a wandering hippie by the side of the road: Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a hippie who looks like Jesus and painted Jesus on the back of his jacket. Just to be absolutely clear: he believes in Jesus. And Janette takes him home so he can drop some pipe-hittin’ TRUTH BOMBS on pastor Chuck. See, Lonnie worked his way through the hippie-drug thing but didn’t find any answers, so he turned to Christ; now, he believes “his people” and Christians have a lot in common and could act on that if only the churches would open their doors to barefooted types who suffer the occasional acid flashback. And pastor Chuck is moved by this revelation. Awakened, really. He invites Lonnie and his hippies to the church, where all the SQUARES (man) tut-tut and grasp their pearls. I mean, they’re playing ROCK MUSIC on the stage! That’s the music of THE DEVIL, you know! Even though they’re singing about Jesus? So confusing!

No, we haven’t forgotten about Greg. His story runs parallel to the Chuck-Lonnie partnership, until the two collide. Greg meets Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow), and her smile and eye-twinkle draw him out of military school and into her world, where everyone does drugs and goes to Grateful Dead shows. We never actually see them do drugs, but they’re in a bunch of scenes that go in and out of focus, which tells us that they’re on drugs. They really like each other, but it goes poorly once Cathe’s sister nearly dies from an overdose, prompting her to listen to Lonnie Frisbee, like, talk about Jesus, man. And so Lonnie leads Cathe to Chuck’s church, and then Cathe leads Greg to Chuck’s church, and before you know it, Cathe and Greg are getting the ol’ baptismal. This is just the beginning, too, because there are many scenes to follow that are shot in the golden hour of their god. So many scenes. It’s always the golden hour when you follow that specific god.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I can’t watch a movie about Christianity told from a Christian point-of-view without thinking of Kirk Cameron smashing the evil computer he used for p*rn-watchin’, Office Space-style, in Fireproof. But more to the point, Jesus Revolution has the same bland, slickly workmanlike style of American Underdog.

Performance Worth Watching: Barlow shows some easy, natural screen presence, and Grammer guts it out like a true pro who’s almost but not really convinced that he has a three-dimensional character to play.

Memorable Dialogue: Chuck and his wife Charlene (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) have one of the movie’s many, many, many broad, big-picture conversations about huge topics, as everybody always does:

Charlene: Truth is always quiet. It’s the lies that are loud.

Chuck: (Sighs) It’s complicated.

Sex and Skin: Oh god no.

Our Take: The prevailing conversation about Jesus Revolution is contextual: Relative to other faith-based movies, which tend to use the medium as a pulpit for dogma, this ain’t half bad. But relative to good movies, it’s still not particularly good. The dialogue is nobody-talks-like-this eyeroll fodder, it struggles to balance the character arcs of three protagonists, it feels long and draggy, and the acting and visual presentation have all the panache of made-for-basic-cable fodder. And sure, it doesn’t get outwardly preachy, but it’s crystalline in perspective, subtextually asserting that its particular religious worldview is The Answer, leaving any external thought or philosophy outside the narrative. There is no other alternative for wayward Greg. He followed The Path, and now look at him, he’s a successful pastor preaching to millions (and almost certainly with millions in the bank).

Which is odd, considering this is a story about how the church became more inclusive, inspiring Christian youth movements and the use of contemporary music and film as tools for outreach. There’s surely a compelling film to be made about the Jesus freaks’ cultural influence, but instead, we get a lightly ego-driven Laurie-centric thread, half-baked characterizations of Smith and Frisbee (the latter was a far more complicated character than he is here, more accurately profiled in the 2005 documentary Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher) and a third act that mechanically cycles through the three leads’ miscellaneous conflicts. It’s a snooze. Greg ironing his clothes in an early scene is an apt metaphor for this movie: It’s flat and crisp and clean and totally SQUARE, man.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Jesus Revolution is cornball stuff, slick at times and bumpy at others, and far less interesting than it should be. And you won’t be shocked to learn that it sort of pretends to be For Everyone, but ultimately preaches to the choir.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.