What Would Jesus Buy?

A worthy if uncinematic topic—American overconsumption—is satirized in this overlong, one-note documentary that tracks a cross-country tour by comic-activist Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping. Their anticapitalist shtick is generally met with perplexity by the nation’s mallgoers. After about the third such encounter, all the film seems capable of proving is that performance art makes a dubious vehicle for social change, and sustaining a joke past its breaking point is no less stultifying in the service of good.