Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Rating: 6

Jesus is a young man attempting to find the Priest who abused him as an altar boy at 11, and gain some measure of closure.

I don’t want to be mean, but I fail to see the point of this movie. It wasn’t closure, Jesus didn’t actually get that, despite finding the Priest in the end. The point didn’t appear to be chastising the Church – they had a Bishoply type representing an apparent therapy group for Priests and Clergymen who are, as they put it, “disturbed”, and he was allowed to express his opinion on these charges (and dismiss them) in a flat manner, so the watcher can make judgement for themselves I guess. Everything seems to be presented in a rather clinical manner, up to and including pictures the priest allegedly (there’s that word again) took of Jesus when he was a boy, tastefully blurred but still shown on the big screen. There are interviews with Jesus’ mother and father and Abuelita (Grandmother): father is angry and in denial, mother is crying and piteous, and Grandma is apologetic for encouraging Jesus in this vocation in the first place. It all seems to move along without any real direction or purpose, right up til we get close to the end and Jesus has actually found the Priest, who’s inside a Parish giving Mass. …And then, suddenly there’s huge-screen photos of whom I assume to be Jesus (considerably older) and the Priest, all naked and compromised and such. Nothing is blurred, it’s right in your face, interposed between holyCOWnaked! and holyPriestgivingMass. It kind of reminded me of a last-ditch attempt at shock value, or to wake me up or something. And then we finally have the confrontation with the Priest himself, annnnnd…he admits to nothing. He doesn’t apologize either. Hell, he doesn’t even cry. And I know, it’s supposed to be a documentary style movie, but sadly I think the film failed at even that.