Peanut butter and chocolate, cowboys and sunsets, kittens and puppies, Greg Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan: a few of our favorite things (and people) that go better together. In Matador, the madcap portrait of a hit man hitting bottom, Kinnear and Brosnan caught our eye as a comic couple. Since screening Salvation Boulevard, we’re officially smitten.
A surefire setup up for devilishly religious satire, director/writer George Ratliff’s foray into the spiritual realm slides Brosnan into the slippery shoes of megachurch pastor Dan Day and Kinnear into his signature hapless nice-guy role as Carl, an ex-Dead Head who sees the dazzling light of the Church of the Third Millennium when his bladder beckons him to take a whiz in its bathroom. It’s a serendipitous conversion his “sword of the spirit”-carrying wife Gwen (Jennifer Connelly) can’t stop thanking the Lord for, along with a slew of other fortuitous acts of God — like traffic lights — that she and other Millenium members seek to guide their daily decisions, or cite as their reason for joining Pastor Day’s flock in video testimonials. It’s a life of sunshine and purity balls for Day and the still skeptical but blissfully complacent Carl, until the day Dan debates History of My Disbelief author Dr. Paul Blaylock (Ed Harris), and cynic and Christian lock horns. Dan holds up Carl’s renouncement of his so-described drug-clouded, orgy-filled past, and the professor calls it trading one addiction for another, quipping, “at least Dead Heads know when they’re hallucinating.” The debate is such a success Blaylock invites Carl and Dan back to his office to propose his idea for The Great Divide — a book of opposing conversations written by him and the pastor. Then, suddenly, horrible yet hilarious tragedy strikes.
Dan deals with it less like a pillar of the community and more like a desperate man executing a hasty cover-up (especially as it doesn’t bode well for his plans for a City on the Hill Christian housing development), but not without a paranoid “crisis of spirit” that convinces him that Satan has his cell number and mocks him through the barbecue-skinned devil in Legend. He tasks loyal henchman/church cameraman Jerry (Jim Gaffigan) with keeping Carl from tattling to the police. Not that anyone would believe anything bad about Pastor Dan, especially Carl’s wife and father-in-law. Carl’s only ally is campus security guard Honey Foster (Marisa Tomei) who, speaking of serendipity, happens to be a Dead Head.
Brimming with brimstone humor and biblical spoofs (like a modern-day temptation on the Mount starring Pierce and a drug lord), Salvation Boulevard pokes fun at religious hypocrisy with good-natured gusto that should amuse more than offend Christian audiences. Sight gags, stars with spot-on comic timing, witty dialogue, “rapture ready” coffee mugs … it pulls out all the stops for laughs, and suggests that as suave a Bond as Brosnan was, his true calling is to be the comic wild card to Kinnear’s hapless straight man. Salvation Boulevard is a glorious comedy hallelujah that, despite its irreverence, still gives God the last laugh.
Grade: A
