Not Another Church Movie (2024) review

Dir. Johnny Mack

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ½★

I’ve been subjecting myself to parody movies long enough to realize that there are few things sadder than one that is substantially worse than its targets. Vampires Suck made every Twilight movie before and after it look like high art. An American Carol made me realize that even the weakest Michael Moore documentary had some important morsels of information. And let’s just say, The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It couldn’t even hold a candle(stick) to Judd Apatow’s recent output.

Not Another Church Movie does the impossible. It aims lower and sinks lower than even the most loathsome works from Tyler Perry, who finds himself in the film’s crosshairs. To provide context for those devout Perry fans, it makes Temptation look like Daddy’s Little Girls. As if the use of “Not Another” in the title didn’t already give it away, this is a belated, miserably cheap send-up of Perry’s filmography. Somehow, the people behind this didn’t realize that there’s no greater parody of Perry’s perpetual desire to infuse religion into broad comedy and heavy melodrama than the works of the man himself.

Get a load of this. Television talk show personality Hoprah Windfall (Luc Ashley) is about to leave her television empire behind, and is looking for her successor. Aiding her in her tall order is the God (Jamie Foxx, but of course), who sends an angel feather to entrepreneur and filmmaker Taylor Pherry — the “P” is silent — played by Kevin Daniels. Taylor has a large family, made up of MaDude (also Daniels, fittingly), a foul-mouthed grandmother and sibling to the horndog Moe (Wayne Stamps). Mixed in this familial mess that makes finding a full-time host on The Daily Show look like an easy task is a litany of family drama, involving a woman struggling with a divorce from a philandering man, a painfully stupid mover, a lawyer trying to find love, and a woman who just lost her job who is also tasked with handling her late father’s will.

Because writer/director Johnny Mack has no intention of developing nor sticking with any kind of story, let alone trying to milk any subplot for humor, we’re to assume the messiness inherent to the film is, in itself, a sendup of Perry’s propensity to juggle a barrage of asides. The most amusing due to it being the most brazen of them all involves Foxx’s God, who hangs out with a roundtable of folks in Heaven. This includes sparing interactions with the Devil (Mickey Rourke). However, Mack freely disregards the surreally compelling and would-be original focus of the film in favor of multiple, more dramatic subplots. The brash, hulking MaDude also proves ineffective because of course she would be. She’s a caricature of a caricature. Have you ever tried to photo-copy a copy? It never turns out well.

As rampantly unfunny as it is, Not Another Church Movie also excels at being about as boring and uninteresting as the worst in Perry’s repertoire. This is a parody roughly 10 years too late, and seems almost mean-spirited to the degree that Perry’s most recent works barely even get noticed in the modern day due to their low-key debuts on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Despite somehow securing a theatrical release and netting over half-a-million dollars at the box office, Not Another Church Movie is right in line for a similar, deserved fate: obscurity.

Starring: Kevin Daniels, Jamie Foxx, Mickey Rourke, Vivica A. Fox, Lamorne Morris, Tisha Campbell, Jasmine Guy, Kyla Pratt, Wayne Stamps, T’Shaun Barrett, Lydia Styslinger, and James Michael Cummings. Directed by: Johnny Mack.