Directing: C+
Acting: A-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+

LaKeith Stanfield is great. David Oyelowo is great. Tayana Taylor is great. Omar Sy is great. RJ Cyler is great. Alfre Woodard is great. Anna Diop is great. James McAvoy is fun and Benedict Cumberbatch is a delight. Basically, everyone in this movie is great—jarringly, incongruously. Would that The Book of Clarence were great. Alas.

It begins with great promise, for about five minutes coming in hot with verve and excitement: a chariot race, through “Old Jerusalem”—one that’s just between two racers settling a bet. It’s shot with a knowing urgency, but with a light touch. Drivers get knocked out of their chariot and onto the ground, the camera offering POV shots of them crashing and rolling, an immediately clever and well-executed conceit. The opening titles appear, and they are in an old-school font in an overlay style that evokes old sword-and-sandal epics like Ben-Hur, a knowing reference that will be lost on any of this movie’s younger viewers.

And then . . . within the first ten minutes, The Book of Clarence lost me. It has production value as great as the best that Hollywood has to offer, which writer-director Jeymes Samuel (The Harder They Fall) then uses to spend too much time on characters we struggle to care about, doing little of interest. At a runtime of 129 minutes, this might have been at least slighty improved by shaving off about twenty minutes.

Maybe. The thing is, it’s the story itself that’s the problem. It can’t decide what it wants to be, while performed by exceptional actors who are taking no part in that decision. It starts off irreverent, like it might be sending up the story of Christ, perhaps in the vein of Life of Brian. It then morphs into something surprisingly earnest, about the power of faith, I guess, except it can’t convey its themes coherently. We literally get a crucifixion, complete with blood and whips and dramatic, wailing tears. I found myself imagining Mel Gibson patting himself on the back for liking this movie.

Admittedly, my position here is arguably a little tricky: I am an atheist, just as the titular Clarence (Stanfield) professes to be. It’s easy to see people of faith—who make up the majority of this movie’s potential audience—getting on board with this movie, and staying there, going along with Clarence’s arc of mildly comic selfishness, cynicism, and redemption through genuine miracles. I might become a believer too if I witnessed a miracle, at least one that could be proven not to be a figment of my imagination. So, where’s my miracle? Judging by this film, that’s what it takes to turn a person around. It’s going to take a miracle to turn this mess of a movie into something worth taking seriously. Unfortunately, it shifts from jest to taking itself way too seriously.

Jesus Christ is also a character in this movie, played by Nicholas Pinnock. He spends much of his screen time a faceless shadow under a red hood, like the Ghost of Christmas A.D. Jeymes Samuel gives him far more magical powers than even the Bible ever ascribed to him, making the character the very definition of “extra.” He coexists with Clarence—just as Jesus coexisted with Brian in Life of Brian, incidentally—and as time goes on, it becomes increasingly predictable that he will become a critical factor in Clarence’s story.

The Book of Clarence is an unusual idea conveyed through a majority-Black cast, including Jesus himself, a detail that is rightly incidental. There are some clear racial dynamics at play, with all but one of the White characters being the Roman oppressors. The one exception is the character of a beggar, who is so filthy at the start of the film I didn’t even realize he was White—a visual choice that I suppose skirts the edges of blackface, though that’s not an idea this movie toys with at all, at least not with any clarity.

Clarence decides he wants to try being one of Christ’s apostles, one of which is his own twin brother (also played by Stanfield, except in that case in a very unconvincing beard). When that proves unsuccessful, he decides he’ll just be a Messiah himself. This proves perilous for him when Rome decrees that “all Messiahs” must be crucified. By the time LaKeith Stanfield was being strung up and nailed to a cross, I found myself thinking: What are we doing? Why are we here? I could not come up with a clear answer.

One could argue that The Book of Clarence just isn’t for me, a White guy without any miracles to convince him God exists. My argument is that not even this movie truly knows who it’s for, in spite of a stacked cast who are all deeply committed to the bit—whatever that bit is. There is far smarter, more clever and more authentically expressed emotional arcs out there. Try American Fiction.

*Not even LaKeith Stanfield can save this movie.*

Overall: C+