Rob VanAlkemade’s diverting documentary look at a road trip across American exhibiting the activist art of Bill Talen, aka “Reverend Billy” of the “Church of Stop Shopping,” “What Would Jesus Buy?” is remarkably conflicted: in confronting the objects of materialism and consumerism and globalization, Talen must inevitably traffic in the brand names of the products he attacks, and the advertising industry has always convinced themselves that almost any message that repeats the mantra of brand names reinforces the product almost irregardless of the intended satire or jape. (Co-producer Morgan Spurlock made his points with “Super Size Me!” but Ronald McDonald still lives, to laugh in the face of children forever and ever and ever.) Still, it’s damn funny stuff: Talen’s energetic guff in the face of greater guff is evangelical in its heresies. 91m. (Ray Pride)
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