Movie Review: ‘Don Verdean,’ a sendup of ambitious pastors and the lure of religious relics

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By A.O. Scott

HOLLYWOOD---With its supporting cast of ambitious megachurch pastors and naïve churchgoers, this might look like a satire of religion, or at least of certain aspects of 21st-century American Christianity. But “Don Verdean,” written by Jared and Jerusha Hess, the couple who cooked up “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Nacho Libre” and “Gentlemen Broncos,” and directed, like those movies, by Mr. Hess, is more accurately described as a religious satire. Its intentions are, to some degree, corrective: It mocks some of the popular corruptions of faith so as to invite the audience to reflect upon what real faith might be. [link]