Cutting repeatedly between the play and a rowdy drag show at a thriving gay bar, directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher underscore the parallels in the pageantry. The exuberant drag artists applying their war paint share common showbiz purpose with the actor playing Jesus, smearing himself with fake blood (“It’s edible!”) and proudly displaying the prop room’s selection of whips. Like his queer counterparts across town, his lip-syncing is flawless.
Buffing difference into sameness is the movie’s modus operandi. Helped by a homespun narration and good-natured interviews, the filmmakers lock down a “no rancor here” tone that vigorously asserts itself at every turn. Discord over an anti-discrimination ordinance simmers quietly in the background, and a resident recalls his mother explaining his father’s late-life coming-out as submission to “a sexual disease,” but nothing is permitted to rankle the optimism. A truck driver grumping about permissiveness appears like a humorous aside, and an archive clip of a protester smashing a pie into the face of the anti-gay activist Anita Bryant transforms intolerance into slapstick.
Favoring the superficial over the substantive, “The Gospel of Eureka” keeps skirting opportunities to excavate experience — like, say, prodding longtime gay residents about how the town navigated the AIDS crisis. It is an odd duck on a Bible Belt pond: serene on the surface, but churning underneath.
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‘The Gospel of Eureka’
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.