Movie Nation

One joke comedies rarely work, even when the one joke is “sex with a gymnast.”

And even when that one joke, a pommel horse punchline long before “Seinfeld” rendered it the object of every man’s fantasy, is delivered by that petite little Melissa Rauch of TV’s “Big Bang Theory.”

Liberated from broadcast standards, Rauch let’s her foul-mouth-flag fly in “The Bronze.” It  reimagines a Kerri Strug/Mary Lou Retton “America’s Sweetheart”type  as a promiscuous, bitter and foul-mouthed small town gymnast whose Olympic glory was doing one last routine on a busted ankle, taking one for the team.

A dozen years later, the “Amherst Angel” is still living in Amherst, Ohio, still wearing her Rome (nope) Olympics warm-up suit, still cadging freebies from the local diner, the Sbarro and Foot Locker at the mall, still refusing to move on.

The fact that we’re introduced to Hope Anne Greggory masturbating to videotape of her Big Olympic Moment in a dated, split-level house financed by her brief window of cashing in tells us all we need to know about her. Crude come-ons to any and all comers at the local bar underline that impression. You know, “sex with a gymnast.”

But the fusillade of f-bombs she hurls at her widowed, postman dad (Gary Cole) confirms it. She needs to get a job if she plans to continue this lifestyle.

“I don’t HAY-ev a lifestahll,” she honks in a hilarious facsimile of a Buckeye accent. She snaps her gum, inhales junk food, rifles the mail in dad’s truck for cash and refuses to even consider mentoring or teaching other gymnasts.

“I’m a CHAYEM-pion! Nawt a coach!”

But her own estranged coach has killed herself and left Hope Anne some cash. All she had to do is nurture another local star-on-the-rise, “the daffodil who is peeking through the snow” to the Toronto Olympiad.

Maggie’s a perky, squeaky-clean Christian living with her janitor-mom (Cecily Strong of “Saturday Night Live”) in a trailer park. Cute as a button and a walking muscle, she is tailor-made for stardom. Aw, shucks, she’ll overshadow Hope Anne in a heartbeat.

“Shucks? Why don’t you curse normal?”

Hope Anne may be an uneducated dolt, but she’s cunning enough to recognize a threat to her hometown celebrity. Can she overcome her jealousy and do what the great athletes-turned-coaches do? Make her protege better than she ever was?

Sebastian Stan shows up as the villain, a more successful ex-gymnast with bad history (sexual history) with Hope Anne. Thomas Middleditch is the small town guy Hope Anne cruelly nicknamed “Twitchy” in middle school. A love interest? What do you think?

Rauch and her husband co-wrote the script and anchor it in Melissa’s malleable voice and walking (very short) sight gag looks. Hearing such filth pour of that tiny mouth is hilarious.

And yeah, there’s a sex scene for the ages for all the prurient “sex with a gymnast/What’s Bernadette from “Big Bang” look like naked?” curious.

It’s just not enough. “The Bronze” is predictable, and outside of Rauch, Cole and a very convincing (conditioning, some training, clever editing) Haley Lu Richardson, the cast is bland. Strong has nothing to play, and nobody else makes an impression.

“The Bronze” is proof that one great joke is not the route to comic gold, or for that matter silver.

MPAA Rating:R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout and some drug use

Cast: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Haley Lu Richardson, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Cecily Strong
Credits: Directed by Bryan Buckley, script by Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:48

Morgan Freeman and a lot of folks most of us won’t recognize star in this digitally-augmented remake of “A tale of the Christ,” “Ben-Hur.”

Insane that Hollywood would remake it, but with CGI being what it is, you don’t have to build Roman triremes (galleys) and can fake all the stuff stunt legend Yakima Canutt and Charlton Heston had to do –on set, with real horses and chariots.

This trailer leaves me colder than cold. Where’s the ham, the homosexual undertones, the Technicolor texture, scenery chewing?

Maybe it’ll be better by August.

OK, it looks like “X-Men” for toddlers.

But…Tim Burton! TIM BURTON! A couple of eye-popping bits to feast on, for sure.

“The Brothers Grimsby” is 83 minutes of excruciating, nauseating, boundary-pushing “comedy” that never for a second feels like it’s anything but visual evidence of the end of Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic leading-man career.

And in a lame buddy picture, to boot.

The wonderful character actor Mark Strong and his stunt doubles acquit themselves nicely. And action director Louis Leterrier delivers a showpiece opening, a first-person-shooter/chase sequence with Strong’s secret agent character punching, shooting and stomping after a quarry.

But Leterrier (“The Transporter”) doesn’t do comedy. And aside from stopped-up toilet gags (“Brown Alert!”), elephant semen stunts and endless views of his butt crack, neither does Cohen.

Isla Fisher’s husband stars as a drunken, breeding working class lout and soccer fanatic in rundown Grimsby, a sideburned dope who sexes up his slovenly wife (Rebel Wilson, natch) in mattress stores. Because they’ve produced eleven kids, and privacy’s a matter of degree.

“You’re all out of breath,” he lectures his under-age brood. “I told you lot to quit smoking!”

“I thought you meant crack?” one tyke, perhaps the one named “Django Unchained,” complains.

Nobby misses his long-lost brother, Sebastian. That would be Strong, who used the decades after splitting from his fellow orphan to become an assassin.

The Selection Committee of screenwriters doesn’t bother to figure out a way for Nobby to discover his brother. The writers just hurl them together on an assignment, which Nobby botches.

And now both brothers are on the run, hunted by bad guys and the government agency (Ian McShane runs it, Mrs. Cohen, Isla Fisher, is Sebastian’s control agent), tracking a plot to South Africa.

Where “Push” star Gaborey Sidibe is subjected to the most humiliating scene of her career.

There’s an ugly running gag about Daniel Radcliffe and HIV, assorted gross masturbation/genital moments, involving humans and elephants  And then there are the almost-charming bits showing working class devotion to soccer.

But Cohen is way off his game, even when he delivers an amusing lecture on how guns remove guilt or accountability from violence.

The movie’s body count is almost as jarring as its sexual overreaches.

Toddlers tossing F-bombs, “I’m gettin’ stiffer than a pedophile at Legoland!” jokes and a son named “Luke. We call him that because ‘e’s got leukemia” (not really, just a welfare scam), and those are the highlights.

The rest? Exhausted, obvious and gross.

MPAA Rating:R for strong crude sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, language, and some drug use

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Rebel Wilson, Isla Fisher, Gabourey Sidibe, Ian McShane
Credits: Directed by Louis Leterrier, script by Phil Johnston, Sacha Baron Cohen and Peter Baynam. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:23

It now being an established fact that these “Divergent” movies are a terrible, hackwork embarrassment to science fiction, YA films and action cinema in general, the time has come to fret over their real impact.

Have they broken Shailene Woodley?

A young actress of limitless potential and an almost superhuman empathy, we could see great things in her thanks to films such as “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now,” even “The Fault in Our Stars.”

But this “Divergent” series has turned her apathetic, tuned-out and in desperate need of detox.

Watch her in “Allegiant – Part 1,” the next to last drawn out installment in this cut-and-paste sci-fi sampler series, and tell me she’s not in need of rehab, detox or some serious career soul-searching. She can’t even fake concern about the events her character’s hurled into, much less urgency. She can’t turn up the heat for lukewarm co-star Theo James, who at least handles the fights as if he cares. She can barely hide the eyerolls at this or that “twist” in what novelist Veronica Roth had the cheek to call a “plot.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” one character declares, and everybody seems to be thinking, start to finish.

In the story, we’re post “factions” now. Supposedly. Those inane categories the beautiful young adults are sorted into — Candor, Amity, Erudite, Dauntless, etc — are gone. Jeanine (Kate Winslet) has been deposed. Evelyn (Naomi Watts) and Johanna (Octavia Spencer) seem to have things under control in the ruins of Chicago.

But there’s a world “beyond the wall,” and as the survivors in the city plunge into reprisals –show trials and summary executions — Tris (Woodley) and 4 (James) drag the treacherous Caleb and Peter and the true blue Maggie Q (as Tori) and Zoe Kravitz (Christina) into an escape.

The world’s a toxic moonscape, but there’s hope in the distance — a futuristic paradise (“Gadzooks!”) run by the Bureau of Genetic Welfare.

So we have The Council which runs The Bureau sorting out The Pure from The Damaged. Because if there’s one thing this inane series needs, it’s more exposition.

Jeff Daniels is the guy in charge of The Bureau, sputtering out more pages of exposition — human history, back-story, their “mission” — to Tris and Co.

Something about that guy, though…

This sort of movie really should be about more than meekly obvious names for human traits separated into tribes, the future tech, the dystopian landscape, the fashions, the hair styles.

But there isn’t a line that lands, a scene that sticks with you, an emotion you feel or a moment this movie drags you to the edge of your seat.

James puts the effort in, Miles Teller still tries for his laughs. But thanks to the dull scripts and the efforts of director Robert Schwentke (“RED:), Ansel Elgort has, like Woodley, gotten progressively worse. And more inept at hiding that he’s disconnected from all this.

Shailene’s bored, and we’re all bored with her. Get it over with already.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense violence and action, thematic elements, and some partial nudity

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Jeff Daniels, Zoe Kravitz
Credits: Directed by Robert Schwentke, script by Noah Oppenheim, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, based on the Veronica Roth books. A Summit release.

Running time: 2:01

A movie must stand on it own legs. If it must be explained by its filmmakers or propped up by our vivid, fill-in-the-missing-parts memories of a book, play or previous film it is based on, then somebody has fallen down on the job.

That’s the case with “My Golden Days,” director Arnaud Desplechin’s 20-years-later prequel to “My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument.”

“Golden Days” once again features Desplechin’s muse, Mathieu Amalric (“Quantum of Solace”, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) as anthropologist Paul Dedalus, reminiscing over a couple of specific memories of his youth. The film’s French title is “Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse,” or “Three souvenirs/memories of my Youth.”

It’s a vivid recreation of a time (the ’80s), a place and an intense, physical letter-strewn love affair of youth. But as a stand-alone film it flirts with utter incoherence.

Start with Paul’s last name. Dedelus, aka Daedalus, like the Greek craftsman who made wings for his son Icarus? This is significant, how? He’s crafting his own story? OK.

Then there’s the structure. Paul leaves behind his Russian girlfriend to return to France for a government job. The film is basically a flashback contained (sort of) within a French interrogation he undergoes thanks to a passport indiscretion long ago.

Using multiple, almost randomly selected narrators, “Golden Days” traipses back to Paul’s angry childhood, his “mad” then dead mother, his abusive, broken father (Olivier Rabourdin) and a teenage class trip to the Soviet Union.

The film breaks away from that Soviet thread as Paul (and other narrators) are sidetracked by the great love of his young life, the sultry Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet).

The effect is more chronological than cohesive, and while we follow Young Paul (Quentin Dolmaire) through both story threads, their connection is tenuous, even at the coda.

By which time Desplechin has long since abandoned the flashback, moved forward in time to a point where Paul plainly is clinging to the bitter aftertaste of the end of an affair.

The three stories from the past show the bond between Paul and his siblings, Ivan and Delphine and the risk-taking that their shared childhoods drove them to in adolescence.

Ivan dives into pot and flirts with gangsterism. Paul? He joins a Jewish friend in a risky, escape-from-their-tour-group adventure as couriers for Soviet era (@1980) “refuseniks,” Jews who dissented against the powers of the oppressive police state. Paul came home with a black eye, a story to tell and, it turns out, a future passport issue thanks to his naivete/heroism.

The meat of the movie is the young love/first love affair with Esther, an overripe, Bardot-pouty siren who is awfully popular with the boys.

“My eyes devour you,” he confesses (in French, with English subtitles), sure she’s out of his league.

“I always have that effect,” she smirks in agreement, in between drags on her sexy French cigarette.

They’re sophisticates. He’s more confident than he lets on, sweet-talking a famous Paris anthropologist (Eve doe-Bruce) into taking him on as a student. Esther is abandoning her many other lovers and pining away for Paul in their provincial hometown. Roy-Lecollinet makes of feel how breathless Paul makes her feel.

This love affair, aching and sexual, is the beating heart of the movie and makes one wish Desplechin had given full voice to his Francois Truffaut worship and made this his “400 Blows.” The Soviet story is intriguing, but underdeveloped. The rage of childhood feels tacked on.

Still, “My Golden Days” is inviting enough to make you curious about its precursor. My memories of “My Sex Life” are thin, at best. But binge-watching them both, back to back on some future wintry Netflix/Amazon streaming date may add sense to the seeming randomness of Desplechin’s wanderings. But as a stand-alone film, “Golden Days” feels leaden.

MPAA Rating:R for some strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and language

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Quentin Dolmaire, Lou Roy-Lecollinet , Olivier Rabourdin, Eve Doe-Bruce
Credits: Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, script by Arnaud Desplechin and  Julie Peyr. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 2:03

As faith-based films go, “Miracles from Heaven” is a bit of a soft-sell.

Faith is present and the faithful are tested — by bad fortune, by the medical establishment, by their fellow churchgoers. But when good things happen to a family whose little girl is snatched from the jaws of an untreatable, fatal illness, they know who gets the credit.

It’s a feel-good movie “based on real events” and built around an emphatic, emotional performance by Jennifer Garner. She plays Christy Beam, a Texas mom who lives every parent’s nightmare. Her angelic little girl, Anna (gets sick). And nobody seems to know what’s wrong.

They live in a big house in relative affluence.

“It’s a good life, Christy Beam,” veterinarian husband Kevin (Martin Henderson of “Everest”) recites, as a mantra. “It’s a good life, Kevin Beam,” Christy beams back.

They’re solid church-going folks, part of a modern “spirit-filled” evangelical congregation where the music is provided by a Christian pop band and the preacher (John Carroll Lynch, very good) who knows sermons go down easier when they’re entertaining — lighthearted.

But the Beams are bowled over when Anna gets sick. And Christy has to get her back up as doctor after doctor misdiagnoses the ever-sicker child. Veteran character actor Bruce Altman has the gravitas to reassure us that yes, his character’s diagnosis is the correct one. Anna is dying and it will be an agonizing death.

Director Patricia Riggen (“Under the Same Moon”) plays up the emotions, the strain and the desperation facing the family, Christy in particular, as she looks for that one doctor who will tell her something different. Desperation sends them to Boston, without an appointment, where a specialist (Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez of “Instructions Not Included”). His news isn’t much better. But as he clowns around the patient, we and they can hope.

Queen Latifah plays a comically sympathetic waitress who shows mother and daughter around the city. Treatment begins, and then something totally outside the treatment changes everything.

The movie flirts with supernaturalism. But the Beams’ story is anchored in smaller miracles — the reliability of friends, the kindness of strangers.

The movie shows how church can be a judgmental place, as the family’s fellow congregants first suggest to her that some sin has brought this punishment from God down on Anna, and then question the “miracle” they claim has healed her.

It can be cloying, with Derbez and Latifah landing their (welcome second act) laughs a little too hard. To its credit, it has only one “God’s Not Dead” worthy poisonous line — “I’m not going to Hell. Hell’s in California!”

But Garner makes us believe in her plight, in Christy’s anger at her faith and her church. And her desperation convinces us that whatever happened, somebody who goes through something as awful as this deserves if not a pass, at least the benefit of the doubt and our full, undiluted sympathy.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material, including accident and medical images

Cast: Jennifer Garner, Kylie Rogers, Queen Latifah, Martin Henderson, Eugenio Derbez
Credits: Directed by Patricia Riggen , script by Randy Brown, based on the Christy Beam book . A Sony/Affirm release.

Running time: 1:49

“Take Me to the River” is a quietly disturbing slice of Southern Gothic that isn’t Southern at all. It’s a Nebraska-California culture clash/sexual abuse story confined and contained in a single family, on a family farm over a reunion/birthday celebration weekend.

This debut indie feature from writer/director Matt Sobel doesn’t quite stand up to close scrutiny, but it is unsettling in the extreme, nervously touching on a whole array of taboo subjects.

Logan Miller (“Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse”) is Ryder, a  gay California teen whose parents (Robin Weigart, Richard Schiff) are dragging him to the farm she grew up on for her mother’s birthday.

Ryder’s a hip, sassy kid. But he needs to tone it down around his unsuspecting relatives.

“They can’t fight you unless you give them something to fight against…I know these people. They’re not very accepting.”

But he can’t help himself. The too-tight shorts come out, the campy sunglasses go on. His snarly, rube cousins want to know where he got them.

“Uh, the 80s?”

All his younger cousins — girls — adore Ryder. Molly, a precocious nine year old played with guileless cunning by Ursula Parker, drags Ryder off to show him the farm.

A scream, blood on her dress, and Ryder stands accused — not out loud — by some, especially Molly’s mad-eyed dad, Keith (Josh Hamilton of TV’s “Madame Secretary”).

It’s what happens next that truly shocks. Nothing. As in, Ryder’s family doesn’t pack up and leave, his mother (Weigart is on TV’s “Jessica Jones”) is too convinced she can smooth this over. His dad (Schiff, from TV’s “The West Wing”) is ineffectual and seemingly spineless.

Keith is threatening in the extreme. Their car is vandalized (“California Perverts!”). And yet Josh is lured over to Keith’s house for lunch — just an uncle and aunt, their three little girls, and the awkward teen semi-accused of assaulting one of them.

Scenes seem included for shock value — Ryder singing a song he won an award for, in high school, that touches on gay sexuality — rather than logic.

But the family intrigues are…intriguing. Ryder, and we, are curious about what is going on, what sort of Greek tragedy his mom’s family is playing out.

You want to credit “Take Me to the River” more than it deserves, but it’s not bad. And it suggests that both Sobel and Miller, whose Ryder seems tragically wrong-footed and guileless at every turn, are talents worth keeping an eye on in the future.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, sexual subject matter

Cast: Logan Miller, Robin Weigart, Ursula Parker, Josh Hamilton, Richard Schiff
Credits:
Written and directed by Matt Sobel. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:24

The rise and fall of cyclist Lance Armstrong earns a brisk and surprisingly nuanced treatment from director Stephen Frears in “The Program.”

The veteran Frears, of “The Queen”, “The Grifters,” “High Fidelity” and “Philomena,” finds the good and bad in Armstrong, the disgraced Tour de France winner who realized he’d need to cheat to keep pace with the best cheaters in his sport, and proceeded be the greatest cheat of them all.

Ben Foster (“The Messenger”, “3:10 to Yuma”) brings his usual intensity to the fiercely competitive Armstrong. He gets across the almost absurd competitive drive, the arrogance and menace (ESPECIALLY the menace) and the compassion, the athlete who started his LiveStrong Foundation and took his role as cancer survivor determined to inspire others seriously.

The script gives Foster moments where we see guilt sneak onto Armstrong’s face as he comforts this cancer sufferer or that one. He knows he’s let the world down long before we find out.

The most daring thing Frears does is let Armstrong be human, get past the arrogance that had him bullying anyone who dared to question him or his achievements (despicably, his shut-them-down defense was always “because CANCER”). We see the focus and mania the great athletes always possess.

“After the disease, I never want to be that close to losing again!”

The film is based on reporter David Walsh’s years of dogged reporting on cycling and Armstrong, and Irish actor Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”) brings a cynical whimsy to Walsh that has never come out in Walsh’s public appearances. He knows the sport, interviews Lance just as he’s getting his start racing in Europe and while noting “he’s not lacking in confidence,” sizes him up as only “a great (one) day racer.” He could never win the Tour.

But in one memorable scene, watching Lance sprint through the pack going UP a mountain (“He used his brakes, four times, going UPHILL!”) the slack-jawed Walsh knows.

Frears packs a lot into a 103 minute film. We get quick lessons in “power to weight ratios” and the body mass (shape) efficiency necessary to win at cycling. A lot of this stuff comes from another disgraced character in this saga, Dr. Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet of “Joyeux Noel“). The Ferrari scenes — in his office, in medical conferences — show how he realized that Erythropoietin, or EPO, a red-blood cell generating drug developed to treat anemia and kidney disease, could be a great boon to athletes.

The script and Canet’s way of playing these scenes make Ferrari come off as someone who knows he’s breaking the rules, but who honestly sees nothing unethical with making athlete’s bodies more efficient machines.

Frears can afford to paint this story in quick, illustrative scenes — broad strokes — because Armstrong’s story has been covered ad nauseum, through Oprah, TV movies and documentaries (Alex Gibney’s “The Armstrong Lie” is definitive) and “60 Minutes,” which credulously and breathlessly bought into his “miracle,” only to have revisit him after their gullibility was exposed. Brief scenes taking us through cancer and his rise to glory make the movie feel truncated, a “just the highights/lowlights” picture.

But “The Program” wisely hangs on Foster’s fierce performance, transforming himself into Lance. There’s joking among his awed (or cowed) U.S. Postal teammates about who will play Lance in a planned film about Armstrong — Matt Damon or Jake Gyllenhaal.

Foster reshaped his body (as did Lance) for racing and looks absolutely at home on a racing bike. Foster remakes his screen personality as Armstrong’s ego and swagger got the better of him, a cocky momma’s boy who took to intimidating riders, reporters and others who insinuated he was cheating, clenching his teeth and glaring/staring down those who questioned his “miracle.”

Lee Pace is properly amoral as Lance’s all-knowing manager, and Jesse Plemons makes a strong, guilt-ridden impression as teammate and “good soldier” Floyd Landis, whose downfall brought on Armstrong’s. Dustin Hoffman has a cameo as the risk assessment investor who put Armstrong on the record, lying about his cheating.

It’s not a Greek tragedy, and it’s certainly too soon portray Armstrong, a willing and cunning cheat, as that sort of figure. But Frears has done Armstrong’s sinful and inspirational side justice. And Foster has demonstrated once again why he’s one of the most formidable, under-appreciated talents in the cinema, giving a performance that transcends villainy and finds the ego behind the EPO, and the hero behind the yellow bracelets.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd, Lee Pace, Jesse Plemens, Dustin Hoffman, Guillaume Canet
Credits: Directed by Stephen  Frears, script by John Hodge, based on the David Walsh book. An eOne release.

Running time: 1:43

It’s got the always-funny Sam Rockwell and Jemaine Clement, Will Forte and Danny McBride in it. And the can-be-funny Amy Ryan and Leslie Bibb show up in support.

The team behind “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre” wrote and filmed it.

And the premise, a credulous Biblical archaeologist starts faking his Bible-confirming discoveries? Seems like a natural.

So why isn’t “Don Verdean” funnier?

Start with the title character’s makeup and Rockwell’s performance of Don Verdean. He’s a low-rent scientist catering to the science-denying corner of American religion, Fundamentalist Christians. He’s famous in those circles for “finding” the shears that the Philistines used to shear Old Testament hero Samson’s strength-giving locks.

But fame for this thinker of unspecified credentials means he lives in the smallest late model Winnebago on the road, traveling from church to church, giving presentations, selling books and trying to (gently) stare down his critics.

He’s a believer, and bringing people to Christ is what he sees as his mission. “The Lord guides my hand” as he searches the Holy Land (without permission) for his “World changing discoveries.”

But  fortune smiles on him when a slippery Super Church pastor, Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride) and the hooker he was caught with and then married (Leslie Bibb, a hoot) commission Don to bring the wonders of The Holy Land “over here, where they belong.”

A bungled first discovery — Lot’s Wife (turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) — shows the flaws in Verdean’s methodology. The Bible is his map, shady testing (discovering the acidic soil that MUST have been Sodom) his science and a shadier, and incompetent Israeli hustler (Jemaine Clement) is his Holy Land hook-up.

Don’s as gullible as those he sells his story to.

As they cover up the Lot’s Wife fiasco (the stone formation has a penis), Don Verdean, his trusty True Believer assistant (Amy Ryan) and these inept Israelis scamper about Israel, chased by gun-waving cops, frantically trying to locate Goliath’s skull through Biblical direction, intuition and prayer.

And they’re doing it on a budget — just a couple of days to find something tangible from the fog of Judeo-Christian myth. You can see the dilemma. So true believer Don takes a shortcut into fakery. Boaz the Israeli (Clement) figures it out and aids and blackmails him. He wants to come to America, get women and have his own Pontiac. A Fiero, apparently.

Will Forte has a wicked twinkle and some clever bits of business as the equally disgraced competitor to Pastor Tony in their corner of MegaChurch Utah. He’s just waiting to expose them all, adding more pressure to Verdean’s work.

Director Jared Hess is so centered in PG niceness that even his scoundrels are soft around the edges, and that works against the film. Don Verdean seems more confused than despicable, and never remotely as desperate as this bottom feeder no doubt is.

Hess and his co-writer wife Jerusha are Mormons, and their films can be patronizing, with a “Who us?”  racism about characters outside their worldview. Making Don Verdean an innocent and Boaz (Clement gives him a thick Arnold Schwarzenegger accent) the truly unscrupulous one is excused because, what, he’s called “Israeli” and not a Jew?

Hess refuses to judge the gullible and one wonders if the writer and director had some notion of centering this on Mormon penchant for “Biblical proof” artifact hunting, but lost their nerve.

Ryan has nothing to play here, but McBride, Forte, Bibb and especially Clement push their characters into caricature in search of laughs. And they find a few.

But the normally dependable Rockwell seems uncertain of what to do with Verdean, determined to play the straight-arrow straight man, struggling to find Truth or something that will pass for it with the good-hearted folk he never once thinks of as “rubes” who are his clientele.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for crude and suggestive content, some language and brief violence)

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Danny McBride, Jemaine Clement, Will Forte, Leslie Bibb
Credits: Directed by Jared Hess , script by Jared and Jerusha Hess. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:35