‘Honk For Jesus’ Proves Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall Need Their Own Sitcom

Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, which is now in theaters and streaming on Peacock Premium, has what every good sitcom needs: Specific, oddball characters portrayed by very funny actors with heaps of comedic chemistry. Of course, Honk For Jesus is not, in fact, a sitcom. It’s a feature film written and directed by Adamma Ebo, adapted from Ebo’s 2018 short of the same name. But honestly? Honk For Jesus should be a sitcom. At the very least, Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown deserve their own show, because both actors absolutely slay these characters.

Adding to the sitcom vibes, Honk For Jesus is a mockumentary-style satire. A fictional documentary film crew has been tasked with filming the supposed comeback of a Southern Baptist megachurch, where Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Brown) used to preach to tens of thousands of people. Then a scandal—described only as “misconduct” on Lee Curtis’s part—forced his church to close. But his always-loyal wife, Trinitie (Hall), stood by him, and together, they hope to reclaim their former glory with a grand re-opening on Easter Sunday.

Brown and Hall slip into their roles with deceptive ease. Lee Curtis is the showman, preening and prancing for the camera, totally unaware of how he’s coming off. “Look at this!” he crows, gesturing at his gaudy, expensive suit. “Don’t it look like I worship the Lord?!” You do understand why he’s the way that he is—once upon a time, he would scream at his congregation, and they would scream back. That’s no longer the case after his fall from grace, but, much like Michael Scott in The Office, Lee Curtis lives in his own world of self-absorbed denial.

Trinitie, meanwhile, lives in a different state of denial. It’s a self-preservation technique; an insistence to herself that she didn’t make a mistake by tying her life to a man who’s bound to self-destruct. Hall must hit a world record for the number of strained smiles she shoots to the camera, each one more forced than the last. (Rivaling Jim Halpert’s glances to the camera, if we’re continuing The Office comparisons.) You can tell, deep down, she knows that everything Lee Curtis has her do—shaking it for the lord, taking it from behind, painting her face like a literal mime—is humiliating and debasing. Yet she just can’t seem to say no.

Together, Brown and Hall are the perfect cringe comedy duo. Brown, best known for his dramatic roles in This Is Us and American Crime Story, proves we’ve been sleeping on him as a comedian. He commits to the bit; gives 110 percent every time. Hall, meanwhile, shows off why she’s been a comedy queen for as long as she has been. She’s a master of mirroring, reacting to her on-screen husband’s stunts with awkward laughs and bugged-out eyes. And of course, perhaps the height of their combined comedy powers comes when husband and wife rap along to Crime Mob’s “Knuck If You Buck” while cruising down the highway. (At first, you don’t think Trinitie is going to join in, and then, quite suddenly, she does, and it’s everything.)

Inevitably, because of the trajectory of the plot, Honk for Jesus loses some of its humor as it delves into darker subject matters. That’s a shame, because watching Brown and Hall do their thing together is undoubtedly the best part of the movie. So why not capitalize on the good stuff, give the people what they want, and just go ahead and give Hall and Brown a Honk for Jesus spin-off sitcom? It’s already a Peacock film, and Brown is an NBC darling, thanks to This is Us. Make it happen, NBC. Shake it for the lord.