'Jesus Revolution' is about the "Jesus Revolution" also known as the "Jesus Movement" or "Jesus Freaks", a Christian revival amongst hippies and disillusioned young people that started in California in the late 60's, spread nationally and then petered out in the early 70's. It's cheif legacy, besides lives changed, are a number of Church's and ministries that grew out of it and the birth of "Praise and Worship" aka "Christian Rock" services which have changed the face of much of American Christianity, to no doubt mixed results.
The film focuses on the stories of three prominate figures in the movment; Chuck Smith (played thoughtfully by Kelsey Grammer) who founded Calvary Chapel, which became a kind of "franchise church" with over 1,000 locations at peak; Lonnie Frisbee a bearded "prophet figure" (played by Jonathan Roumie, who is Jesus on the popular series 'The Chosen') who became a founder of "The Vinyard Movment" and Greg Laurie a troubled young man (played by Joel Courtney, who looks like a young Emile Hirsch) who founded Harvest Christian Fellowship and Harvest Crusides. There is much Christian brand simotry to this movie.
The film follows some pretty obvious beats for its first half or so but impressed me when it didn't wrap up everything with a quick nice bow, after initial success cracks and jealously amongst our lead figures lead to some real consequences, though everything is made good again in the closing 'what happened after' screen texts.
This film is okay, not horrible but not great. It has good moments but at least to me was not as moving as it no doubt intended to be. Still the film is quite competently done, has better the average production values for a "Christian film" and is largely good spirited, sadly not a given in the field of movies aimed at an evangelical audiance. **1/2
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