Believe Me Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Believe Me Blu-ray Movie Review

But Don't Ask Where Your Donations Are Going

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 22, 2015

Believe Me is frequently described as a Christian film, which carries the unfortunate suggestion that the film's target audience is people of faith or that it aims to convert the viewer (or both). The first non-documentary feature from the Austin-based team of director (and co-writer) Will Bakke, writer Michael B. Allen and producer Alex Carroll, Believe Me is a wicked satire of evangelical fundraising and its abuses, made with the kind of loving care that only insiders could bring to the subject. You have to be devoted to something to parody it effectively, and Bakke et al. approach their subject with the kind of intimacy that bespeaks their continued involvement. There isn't a hint of condescension in Believe Me, just a recognition that everyone falls down.

Bakke and Allen previously made the documentary One Nation Under God (2009), which chronicled their road trip across America meeting others of different faiths and questioning their own. Their first venture with Carroll was the film Beware of Christians (2011), in which a similar trip across Europe revealed a radically different vision of Jesus from the one that is typical in America. The narrative of Believe Me reflects the same restless questioning that drove the team's documentaries, and while they haven't quite perfected the craft of shaping a satisfying story with a beginning, middle and end, the film is lively, engaging and often very funny. These are filmmakers worth watching.

Believe Me is set in an unspecified time period, but the absence of cell phones, notebook computers and the internet suggests that we're several decades in the past. Four college seniors are cruising toward graduation without much thought other than hazing the latest crop of fraternity pledges. Sam Atwell (Alex Russell, Chronicle) is headed for law school. Pierce Clovins (Miles Fisher, whose resemblance to Tom Cruise was exploited in Superhero Movie) is dreading the prospect of working in his father's financial firm. Baker (Max Adler) is suffering from a "quarter-life crisis" as he faces the prospect of life after college; he also quotes Jerry Maguire relentlessly. Tyler (Sinqua Walls), the most serious of the group, is applying for internships.

A bombshell gets dropped by a neurotically fatalistic dean played by Nick Offerman (best known as "Ron Swanson" on Parks and Recreation), who cheerfully informs Sam that his scholarship expired the previous semester. He owes thousands of dollars in tuition. If it isn't paid, Sam can't graduate.

Like many desperate people, Sam turns to crime. Inspired by a visit to a campus religious meeting with Pierce (who insists that it's a great place to pick up women), Sam observes how generously Christians will donate money in the name of Jesus. So he convinces his buddies to create a fake charity, which they proceed to do with admirable attention to detail. They call it "Project Get Wells Soon", an organization devoted to providing safe drinking water for the children of the impoverished African nation Lesotho. Utilizing the slave labor of fraternity pledges, they distribute flyers for a campus rally at which Sam and Pierce do a credible impression of revivalist preaching. The crowd fills jar after jar with cash—not yet enough to pay Sam's tuition bill, but it's a start.

But the act is so good that Sam and his buddies are noticed by Ken Hopkins (Christopher McDonald), head of a national evangelical organization, Cross Country, that tours America raising funds for numerous church-sponsored charities. Together with his tour coordinator, Callie Edwards (Johanna Brady), Ken offers the group a featured spot. The opportunity to make big money (and skim part of the cash for themselves) is more than Sam and his buddies can resist, especially Pierce, who is a raw capitalist at heart. As for Sam, his motives are mixed: Callie fascinates him, even though she already has a long-time boyfriend in Gabriel (Zachary Knighton), Cross Country's musical director and resident rock star. Baker is up for anything that defers adulthood. Tyler, who has had doubts from the beginning, continues to struggle with pangs of conscience.

The lengthy Cross Country tour gives Bakke et al. an ideal perspective from which to explore the overlap of religion and show business that underpins successful fundraising. The little-seen Steve Martin drama, Leap of Faith (1992), covered similar ground cynically, treating any element of populist outreach by a religious organization as a badge of fraud. But Believe Me views such efforts as sensible and routine. If you want to address a crowd of people in the 20th Century, then of course you must have an auditorium with lights, a sound system, a tech booth and a backstage crew. Since music has so often been part of the religious experience, you have to provide something that people will want to hear. Today that requires guitars, keyboards and drums, and someone has to know how to wire the amps and work the soundboard. In one of the script's best devices, it's Baker, a non-believer, who devises a new form of popularization through merchandising: a line of clothing called "Cross Dressing". It includes T-shirts with up-to-the-minute slogans like "F Satan!"

For the Cross Country people, worship is everyday life, but for Sam and his friends, it's a brave new world. In different hands, the collision of these two groups might have turned satirical but since Bakke et al. treat the Cross Country group respectfully, the result is something different. (The only thing that gets sharply parodied is sappy faith-based movies with bad acting and soap-opera plots, a faux example of which Callie goes to see.) Even the sequences where Sam and his friends "workshop" their Christian disguise, analyzing their new colleagues like an alien culture and teaching each other the customs so that they can better blend in, are written and performed with a kind of winking affection. Indeed, the connection that begins to develop between the swindlers and their "marks" becomes the con mens' weakness. The sense of trust that Sam and the others must build day after day, night after night, as they stand in front of cheering crowds and encourage people to give generously, begins to weigh upon them. With money piling up far beyond what was needed to pay off Sam's tuition, they start to feel guilty about what Tyler bluntly describes as "stealing from Christians".

And this is where Believe Me is at its weakest. As screenwriters, Bakke and Allen clearly struggled for a satisfying resolution that is both morally acceptable and consistent with the film's light-hearted tone. The result is an ending so vague, abrupt and unsatisfying that it could almost be described as magical (or even miraculous). If you rewatch the film's last half hour with close attention, it is possible to tease out the details that the team apparently intended to explain the story's conclusion, but one shouldn't have to do that, especially in a film that has taken such care to build up the initial scam with realistic detail and point-by-point explanation. I suspect that, if the plot's resolution had been explained with the same care as Sam's scheme, its lack of credibility would be glaringly obvious, because bitter rivalries are erased in an instant, long-time loyalties go out the window and "thou shalt not steal" gets put on hold, as long as the theft is for a good cause. As for Sam's tuition and his future? Your guess is as good as mine.

Believe Me Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot digitally on the Arri Alexa by John W. Rutland (Lovely Molly), Believe Me was finished on a digital intermediate from which Virgil Films' 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably derived. The Blu-ray image reflects all the usual virtues of digital capture, with its fine detail, sharp definition and absence of noise or interference. Colors are vivid without being overly saturated or unnatural; the major exception is the various Cross Country shows, where the stage lighting is deliberately theatrical.

Virgil has mastered the 93-minute film with an average bitrate of 20.84 Mbps, which is passable for a digitally acquired work without major action scenes. No visible artifacts were in evidence.

Believe Me Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Believe Me has a lossless PCM 2.0 track, but you won't find it anywhere on the Blu-ray's menu. Most players should allow the viewer to select it manually, but for some reason the track simply isn't listed. There's a 5.1 track, but it's lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 at the DVD-standard rate of 448 kbps. Since Virgil has released numerous other Blu-ray titles with lossless 5.1 audio, it is hard to fathom why Believe Me did not receive the same treatment.

The DD 5.1 track is perfectly adequate, reproducing the dialogue clearly and effectively conveying the sense of the crowd at the Cross Country events, which are the film's biggest sonic moments. The lively score by Hanan Townshend (To the Wonder) also sounds quite good, as do the performances by "Gabriel" (who is credited by his character's name, rather than as actor and musician Zachary Knighton). Songs from several other groups are woven throughout the soundtrack, and they too enliven the experience, but there's really no excuse at this point in the life of the Blu-ray format for omitting a lossless encode.

Note also that the disc does contain English SDH subtitles, even though none are listed on the menu. They can be switched on manually from the player's remote.

Believe Me Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Many interviews and featurettes of the type usually included as disc extras are available at the film's official website. The Blu-ray itself contains only the following extras:

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.39:1; 6:59).
• Baker Hazes the Pledges
• Tyler Meets the Tech Crew
• Sam and Baker Are Hungover
• The Guys Are Hungover
• Callie Hurts Yale's Feelings
• Baker Reconciles with Yale



• Outtakes (1080p; 2.35:1; 4:00): Whatever the film's subject, lines get blown, actors crack up and props don't cooperate.



• Trailers (1080p; 2.39:1)
• Teaser Trailer (1:51)
• Official Trailer (2:24)

Believe Me Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Documentaries require different narrative skills than fiction, and this first effort by Bakke, Allen and Carroll shows great promise, but the script needed the tough love of a stern disciplinarian to insist that the gaps be filled in (and, if doing so revealed flaws, rethought). Still, the team has a distinctive voice, and their portrayal of an evangelical community in a relatable manner is a triumph in and of itself. Despite its flaws (and some bizarre Blu-ray mastering), I recommend Believe Me, because it's original and funny and there's nothing else like it.