Jesus Henry Christ seems to have all the right things going for it. Toni Collette and Michael Sheen, two immensely gifted actors take center stage in the film, which Julia Roberts saw enough potential in to executive produce. Dennis Lee, who led the star-studded Fireflies in the Garden last year(which also featured Roberts), is directing based on his own Student Award winning short film. Oh, and Stephen Hawking loves it enough to make a rare appearance as well. The story follows 10-year old genius James Hervin(Sunshine Cleaning's Jason Spevack), who wants to find his real father but learns he was conceived via sperm donation. Ok, sounds good enough, so what's the problem?
While there's nothing really wrong with the newly released trailer, it bears too close a resemblance to the films of Wes Anderson for my liking. Lots of quirky, self aware characters with no real emotional center. Even the music sounds like pure Anderson. Mainly, Dennis Lee doesn't do much for me as a director, and as we saw last year he's perfectly capable of wasting a wealth of top notch talent. But I like every person in the film, including Spevack who was a joy to watch in Sunshine Cleaning and Ramona and Beezus, so hopefully my sensors are misfiring this time.
Jesus Henry Christ opens on April 20th. Check out the trailer below....
