Jesus Henry Christ

Jesus Henry Christ(2011) takes indie quirkiness to a bold, new rung of hell. Dennis Lee’s directorial debut is so cliché and so strikingly inept that it almost functions as a warped, Wet Hot American Summer-style parody of indie cinema post-1994. But alas, the joke’s on us, with producer Julia Roberts to foist this monstrosity on audiences primed on the colorful aesthetics, post-modern references, and sentimentalism of Juno, Wes Anderson movies, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning, et al (all superior entertainments by comparison).



The plot ostensibly follows Henry Herman, a ten-year old genius, and his search to locate his father, who was a sperm donor. With the help of kooky Grandpa Stan (the Alan Arkin archetypical role, played here by Frank Moore) and his tough-but-loving radical feminist mom, Patricia (Toni Collette), Henry becomes acquainted with neurotic professor and author Dr. Slavkin O’Hara (Michael Sheen) and his daughter, an ornery 12-year old lesbian, Audrey (Samantha Weinstein). A ramshackle, improvised dysfunctional family on a quest to self-actualize in nondescript suburbia! If only it weren’t such a stagnant, loquacious quest.

Devoid of a dramatic arc, the film functions a-rhythmically like a series of stale, disconnected, overlong SNL sketches, one after the other, ad infinitum – each so derivative that they only serve to remind you of how many times this kind of thing has been done before – and how much better. The film channels Magnolia in Stanley Spector’s, I mean, Henry’s bold denunciation of his mother exploiting his genius during a scene at a fancy college. Patricia recalls the gruesomely violent deaths of her brothers and her mother in comedic scenes incredibly derivative of Pulp Fiction (here, Christopher Walken’s golden watch is Grandpa Stan’s coveted lighter). Henry and Audrey play hooky and visit an abandoned mall amusement park for a little Garden State-style scream therapy.

With such a facile, episodic storyline, the film is seemingly a character study, but the characters do not develop beyond their exaggeratedly individualistic descriptions; they function as cartoons instead of people. Despite Spevack’s intelligent eyes and genuine poise as a child actor, Henry’s defining characteristic – his genius itself - is suspect, as his “manifesto” is a regurgitation of banal rebelliousness- a manifesto by someone who’s never read a manifesto. Certainly, a boy with a photographic memory (more like a video camera, he describes) would manage to write something a little more illuminating than, “There is no God…there is no Santa Claus” ?

Lee writes uniformly elevated, witless, and long-winded dialog. Characters don’t speak to each other but at each other, and hence, at us, the audience. To put it this way, Lee’s screenplay is more like Max Fischer’s version of Serpico than anything approaching realistic interaction – or deliciously stylized repartee.

Whereas Wes Anderson has used elitist trappings to explore his characters’ insecurities (Rushmore and Royal Tennenbaums being two of his best works) Jesus Henry Christ revels in the intellectual and economic elitism of its characters. In perhaps the film’s most cringe-worthy moment, Henry cracks wise about Jonathan Franzen being a literary one-hit wonder. Later, Lee defines Audrey’s cathartic acceptance of her bullied sexuality as her decision to donate her trust fund to the National LGBT Task Force.

Even as the film preaches the kind of elitist East Coast liberalism that I had heretofore thought was a figment of the feeble Republican imagination, Lee’s satirical targets often baffle-- perhaps an attempt at a Trey Parker/Matt Stone-esque attempt at centrist comedy “balance?” For instance, Slav is made fun of throughout the film for raising his daughter in a world free of gender binaries and writing a book about it, and Lee seems to be conflating Slav’s progressive attitudes on sexuality and gender with the questionable ethics of academic exploitation. Likewise, Lee posits Slav as highly emasculated at the hands of his verbally abusive, shrill wife, whose last name he takes -- the portrayal of her as a bitchy ball-and-chain is not unlike the misogyny found in any dumb bro-mance (Think Ed Helms’ wife in the Hangover).

Additionally, a white man who speaks in Ebonics is the butt of many cheap, uncomfortable jokes (Hello, Tropic Thunder). It’s one thing to critique privileged members of society “experimenting” with minority identity; it’s another to repeatedly denigrate a man as less than for adopting a black son – Grandpa even beats him up –for laughs!