A rallying cry for crusaders against consumerism

Part horror movie, part agitprop theater, “What Would Jesus Buy?” is a documentary on a mission. Loud, proud and cheeky, the film runs roughshod over corporate behemoths Disney, Starbucks and Wal-Mart as it preaches a sermon of simplicity and consumer awareness.

“WWJB?” wends its way across the country, following the antics of the Church of Stop Shopping, a gospel-flavored musical comedy troupe that aims to educate Americans about the over-commercialization of Christmas and related ills. Orating from his port-a-pulpit and backed by two bio-diesel busloads of performance activists draped in choir robes, the group’s leader, Bill Talen -- better known as Rev. Billy -- rails against the evils of Yuletide greed, credit card debt and $4 lattes.

Writer-director Rob VanAl- kemade, in collaboration with Talen and Savitri Durkee, front-loads the film with a frenzied wave of fear-inducing statistics concerning consumer debt and frenzied images of near-homicidal shoppers before introducing us to Rev. Billy and his flock.

Like global warming and other environmental problems that have been the focus of recent documentaries, the horrors and causes of what Rev. Billy terms the “Shopocalypse” are right in front of us -- people living far beyond their means bombarded by hard-sell advertising and spurred on by promises of easy credit -- but chronicled in documentary form they are a lot harder to ignore.

Rev. Billy, his shock of bleach-blond hair swept back off his face, denounces the evils of consumer culture with religious ferocity though, strictly speaking, he’s not a man of the cloth. He’s dead serious about the message, but his rhetoric is more high-wire and greasepaint than fire and brimstone.

Durkee, who is married to Talen and goes by the handle Savitri D, directs the group’s productions, a mix of scheduled concerts and orchestrated guerrilla attacks on places such as Minnesota’s enormous Mall of America and Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Arkansas. The theatricality of the events is both the quality that gets the Church notice and what makes the group and the film so entertaining.

Executive produced by Morgan Spurlock (with Peter Hutchison and Stacey Offman), “What Would Jesus Buy?” features the same in-your-face activist zeal as his 2004 hit, “Super Size Me.”

As Rev. Billy and the Church move toward Sodom -- make that Disneyland -- on their four-week pilgrimage, they build a compelling argument for reducing consumption and questioning where products come from and the true price we pay for them.

At a time when so many of the products from China are being called into question, that not only seems like the right thing to do but the wise thing to do.

kevin.crust@latimes.com

“What Would Jesus Buy?” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. At Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd.; and the Regal/Edwards Westpark 8, 3755 Alton Parkway, Irvine.