The Book of Clarence (2023)

 

Genre: Adventure/ Comedy

Time: 2h 9mins

Director: The Bullitts

Quick Summary: Struggling to find a better life, Clarence is captivated by the power of the rising Messiah and soon risks everything to carve a path to a divine existence.

While I did find this funny, I don't think it was my type of film.

This was really all over the place and I struggled to get into it. Some jokes and one-liners landed really well and got a good chuckle out of me, but then the rest made me cringe a little because they felt like they were trying to be funny. It gave me life of Brian vibes, but it just wasn't as amusing. I think the problem is that they tried to modernise it while making it feel a little disjointed to the story it was actually trying to tell.

Aside from the tongue-in-cheek jabs towards Jesus and religion, I don't remember much from this film. It's all a bit clunky and things don't fit together really well. The longer it went on the more it spiralled downwards and the more it lost me. 

The cast was good considering what they have been given and I will praise them as none of them seemed to be bad at all. In fact, most of them made the jokes funnier in various ways. Shame they had to deal with an awful plot and terrible pacing. 

I think this could have been good if it had gone through a bit of a rewrite, and smoothed out the pacing because this has everything set out to be a good satirical piece on the story of Jesus and the people around him, but it feels more like a stoner comedy that doesn't want to offend anyone.

This puts the mess in messiah.

4/10