The Wasteland Reviewer

Not Another Church Movie (2024) Written Review

What do you get when you combine Tyler Perry films with early 2000s spoof comedy parody? You get quite the wild film. Not Another Church Movie seems like a genius idea with writer/director Johnny Mack taking the salt out of the endless Medea films that Perry created. Those early 2000s spoof comedies had their moments for sure but certainly were not from the Mel Brooks, Zucker, and Christopher Guest era of spoof comedies. These films, like Not Another Teen Movie, were raunchy, dumb, and just plain ridiculous. Most of those descriptors can be applied to Not Another Church Movie. 

How does Mack’s new comedy work as a spoof film? Not Another Church Movie is less of a specific lampoon of a specific story and instead takes shots at all types of films with its own strange meta tale. Taylor Pharry (you get it? Tyler Perry) is a jack-of-a-trades including a lawyer who gets a mission from God to become a writer and write movies. But the Devil gets involved too to make sure that God’s plan does not come true. There is certainly the core story, but this film is drowning in subplots that certainly takes away from the impact of its main story. But worse than that, this main story feels like an afterthought for most of the film and the ending does not quite hit a satisfying place. 

For a spoof comedy, you hope that it will make you laugh, right? This film’s largest boast is that it might get a healthy number of laughs out of people. This surrealist and bonkers is all over the place. But so is the humor. There are certainly moments where the laughs feel so artificial and unfunny. Many of the gags feel so out of left field that it is hard to keep your focus. But there are a few elements that deliver plenty of laughs. Kevin Daniels is Pharry but he is also the fake Medea in the film as well. There are quite a few hilarious one liner that Daniels delivers which make you miss more of the film than about that character. Her brother was also a bright spot as they had great banter. Lamorne Morris is not in the film much, but he gets some laughs as well. But Jamie Foxx as God is probably the most consistently funny element of the whole film. 

But does the rest of the film work? Unfortunately, this script is an absolute mess. There are so many subplots and supporting characters that it just makes the film feel like a sketch comedy show instead of an actual narrative film. The meta commentary on Perry’s work never feels fresh enough to make an impact. All the God and Devil (Mickey Rourke) sequences feel so fake with Foxx and Rourke only showing up with green screen. The visual effects of Heaven and Hell are silly and campy but at least they are fun to look at. But the film swings so wild with everything that it never feels like there is any real weight to the actions of the characters or anything to emotionally latch onto. You might get some sporadic laughs but overall, this is just another messy comedy with a lack of impactful direction.

Is Not Another Church Movie worth your time? I guess it depends on how you measure the worth of your 90-minutes. If you are okay with complete nonsense but some good laughs, you might just find something to appreciate about the experience. Speaking from a technical perspective and filmmaking lens, there is not a lot to appreciate. The story is a mess. Very few characters get enough depth to make them worth a connection with. The concept though? Genius and absurd. This could have easily been a sharp commentary but instead it swings wild and safe with the places we need to be.