The holiday shopping season has officially begun, bringing in the tidal wave of materialism and credit card debt Americans lovingly refer to as the season of giving. Of course, not everyone is thrilled with what the modern American Christmas has become. In What Would Jesus Buy?"" we follow one such group, The Church of Stop Shopping. While the documentary has entertaining footage of the performance/activist group staging their own brand of protest, the film falters when it comes to providing substantial facts and other sources, making the film more of a sermon than a balanced look at American materialism.
The film follows The Church of Stop Shopping as they stage a nationwide tour of malls, Wal-Marts and the mother of all commercial destinations, Disneyland, disrupting the flurry of gift wrapping and price gouging in every locale with bouts of gospel song and dance cursing all that is sacred to the American shopper. The tour is rife with drama, from their bus being run off the road by an ironic trailer truck en route to deliver some commercial goods to the group's charismatic leader, Reverend Billy, being tossed out and banned for life from Starbucks.
While these spectacles are fun to watch, they don't make much of an argument beyond the name of the protest group. It works on some level, as their message is a simple one, but it is fairly doubtful that anyone at Disneyland that day dropped their mouse ears and joined the choir.
Disruptive protests get the most attention but also simplify the message, making it easier to write off as rambling insanity, as most of the shoppers in the film do. There are a few interviews where choir members express frustration with being ignored, but no one further articulates the message of the group beyond ""shopping is bad,"" which isn't enough to convince skeptical viewers.
The film could overcome this issue if it had interesting statistics and data to lay on the table demonstrating the devastation caused by out of control materialism, but the film is sorely lacking in this department. Aside from listing the nation's accumulating trillion-dollar credit card debt and a few iffy figures on how many people actually dread Christmas rather than look forward to it, the film is devoid of factual information.
Instead, the entire focus is on the protest group, a directorial decision that works to the group's detriment in terms of making a film with a well-developed argument against commercialism that isn't strictly moral.
For some, the film is a convincing look at one group's fight against the commercialization of Christmas. These people, however, are likely the same people who don't need convincing. For those who enjoy spending to show their love, the film lacks in a persuasive or substantial argument to stop shopping.
