If you’ve never seen The Big Lebowski, you absolutely need to. If I’m going to recommend one thing in this review, it’s that you should watch The Big Lebowski. It’s very bizarre and might not be for everyone, but to me it’s one of the best comedies ever made. I can watch it over and over again, and I regularly quote the movie in my everyday speech. I count it among my favorite movies of all time. So, when I saw that a spin-off of The Big Lebowski was being made, I got pretty excited. The Jesus Rolls centers on the character Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski. Whether or not you’ve already seen The Big Lebowski, after this review I want you to forget the knowledge that a spin-off of it exists in the world, because you will be better off for it.

The Jesus Rolls is a really bizarre movie, but not in the endearing way like The Big Lebowski is. The movie opens with Jesus getting out of prison, and meeting up with a friend of his named Petey. And that’s about where any real semblance of a plot ends, because from here it’s just Jesus and Petey going about on weird escapades. They steal a car, run into an old friend, and then just do random things that never really amount to anything. I’m not sure if there was supposed to be a point to all of this, or if it really was just supposed to be “a day in the life” sort of thing. Either way, it’s trash.

It’s hard to even begin on why this is such a bad movie. It’s kind of like when a friend writes an essay and asks you to proofread/edit it, but it’s just so glaringly bad in its entirety that the only advice you can really offer is to just scrap it and rewrite the whole thing. It’s easier to talk about the things I liked about the movie because there were so few things. I thought the music was well-done, and there were a few cameos from big names that I thought were fun. And I guess there were a few times I laughed, but I can easily count on one hand the number of times that happened. And half of those times it was laughing more at how dumb something was.

The Jesus Rolls is just inherently unfunny. There are low-brow $5-movie-bin stoner comedies that are funnier than this. The writing is just some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a comedy. The movie was written and directed by John Turturro, who is the same guy that plays Jesus. I’ve never really disliked Turturro as an actor, so I know he’s capable of delivering great material. But apparently he can’t make his own movie for shit, because this is some of the worst material I’ve ever seen in a movie. The acting is also horrendous, though, too. These performances feel so forced and unnatural, and there were plenty of times I couldn’t even understand what Turturro was saying. I’m not sure who ever thought this was funny enough to greenlight, but it was one of the worst mistakes ever.

This is the kind of spin-off/sequel that’s so bad that it almost taints the original movie for me, which is why I recommend just never bothering to watch this. There are times where I feel like maybe I give too many movies good scores, and I feel like maybe I’m too generous in handing out high marks. But then I see a movie like The Jesus Rolls, and it reminds me that the reason why I give good scores to movies is because most of them are some baseline level of good. It’s not until you watch a movie like The Jesus Rolls where you’re reminded just how bad a movie can be. The distance in level of quality between this and most movies out there is astronomical. I really hope that I can push this movie out of my memory, because it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever had to endure.

1/5