Electric Jesus

Electric Jesus is a coming-of-age road movie that chronicles the rise and fall of fictional Christian rock band '316'. The band members, all teenagers, decide to embark on a national tour to 'make Jesus famous' after grappling with their own spiritual priorities and the opinions of their parents and pastors.

The 'make Jesus famous' refrain will be immediately familiar to a subset of folks with experience in evangelical churches and is one of many references to that brand of church culture in the film. The religious elements of Electric Jesus are handled with nuance and a clearly intimate understanding of the source material, though I often felt that the named references were occasionally laid on a bit thick and won't mean much to folks who don't have a very specific background. Especially the recurring Amy Grant shenanigans.

The tour, proposed and organized by used-car-salesman-esque (though perhaps they were going more for skeevy tent revivalist?) band manager Skip Wick (Brian Baumgartner), is initially a small potatoes venture hitting skating rinks and youth meetings. Skip's interactions with the band are fun to watch as the tour continues. Stowaways, hormones, and big breaks knock the narrative around a bit until a climactic final show.

The musical performances are excellent. The songs are well written and engineered, with catchy hooks and clever lyrics that accurately reflect the ideological temperament of these sorts of groups. The actors are actually the ones doing the performing, which was put to brilliant use in a scene featuring mixing board sabotage. (Correction: Not all of the actors actually play their instruments, so props for fooling me there.)

Off-stage, the band members are serviceable actors with great chemistry. Sadly, most of them are underdeveloped as characters. They're always around but we don't really get to know much about them, with the relationship between the band's sound guy and a stowaway pastor's kid occupying far too much focus for a movie about a rock band.

The epilogue could've been removed in favor of an extra scene or two of the band members.

I'd have loved to have seen a Spinal Tap-esque approach to this project, with the band members and writers developing a massive amount of shared lore/fiction, internalizing it all, and then filming as if they'd truly lived those lives. I understand that not everyone has the luxury of 4 years to develop such a thing and the ultimate aim of the filmmakers may have been elsewhere.

The film was enjoyable and visually pleasing, the music is still rattling around in my brain, and it was great seeing this subject matter presented with heart and understanding. As a survivor of awkward Christian youth culture, I'm thrilled. As a mockumentary fan, I'm a bit disappointed. Still, there's nothing like this and it's worth seeing.

I had the joy of seeing this film with a live audience at the Nashville Film Festival. This movie is a fun, humorous and charming coming of stage story that follows the tropes of "the muse and artist" like Almost Famous with pointed and clever satire on Christian popular culture, in the vein of "Saved!" The cast are mostly relative newcomers to acting, but create strong and believable performances, while also making room from appearances from veteran actors such as Brian Baumgartner (The Office) and Judd Nelson (Breakfast Club, and others). The dialogue is fun, sharp witty, and the soundtrack music is what the 80s sounds like at it's best, and the lyrics will cause you likely to laugh out loud, if you pay attention.

Great story, heartfelt, fun and touching - you will love it.

Great soundtrack and story that was executed well by the cast but there were way too many plot holes in the storyline. It seemed like there were deleted scenes that would've helped the story along. A more fully developed and tighter script with deeper characters in the band would've made the movie better. Nonetheless it was a very original idea and a fun movie.

Just saw this as part of the Nashville Film Festival. Going into Electric Jesus, I thought I was in for a satire lampooning Christain Rock ala Spinal Tap. However, this movie is a charming indie film about the rise and fall of a Christain hair metal band in the 80s. It's not preachy, and is much more focused on the human experience of the characters involved. Though certain aspects leave a lot to be desired, what carries the film for me is the enthusiastic young cast, particularly the earnest performance of the lead Andrew Eakle as Erik. Highly recommended for music fans and indie film fans alike.

This is little long, but bear with me here because this film's worth it:

"Electric Jesus" is so many things ... and it's not: a) A comedy as much as it is a dramedy; b) A roman-à-clef as it is an ode to the soundtrack of youth; c) Strictly a teen love story, but an overarching love song to music itself.

Writer/director/co-producer Chris White deftly blends those into a cohesive story about a hair-metal band. Not just any hair-metal band, but a Christian hair-metal band, whose members emerge from a South Carolina high school circa 1986.

Southern Evangelical Christianity makes an easy target, of course, for cheap, shopworn laughs. "Electric Jesus," though, threads an expert needle between needling Bible thumpers while threading its characters together with durable strands of, uh, Christian compassion.

Set in heavy metal's heyday, the story is told through our narrator, Eric, the ultimate music nerd who lands a gig as the sound guy for the band, 316. Next thing we know, Eric and the boys go on tour, taking their music to churches, skating rinks, fellowship halls and other temptation-free establishments.

Eric and the band clearly are high on Christ. Then Sarah, a pretty young thing, stows away on 316's ratty RV whose former owner, a band, of course, graffitied "Joy Explosion." Sarah, of course, becomes Eric's love interest and she also happens to have plenty of musical talent and an agenda of her own

"Electric Jesus" undoubtedly gets plenty of John Hughes '80s teen-amour comparisons, but this film makes considerably more of that dead-on verisimilitude. (Disclaimer: I ran a concert hall for 20 years, and, I mean, I got a little PTSD watching the movie. White absolutely nails the crappy reality of bottom-tier bands' touring lives.)

The real story in "Electric Jesus" is heartbreak. Great songs that set out to break your heart do a fine job of it without coming off as self-conscious. In much the same way, this story doesn't set out to break your heart, either, but the film delights in doing exactly what good songs do.