The 2000 documentary became the template for the homonymous 2021 film, directed by Michael Showalter. It's an interesting flashback.
Jessica Chastain virtually becomes Tammy Faye Bakker, from the earnest Betty-Boop-esque believer who falls for a young would-be preacher, to the hyperbolic, Drag Queen-inspiring caricature in the closing comeback performance. The film takes us into her worlds and shows us what drives her. It also notes that, running jokes and make-up aside, she was the televangelist who reached out to and eventually accepted the queer community.
The film overall benefits from a strong cast. Andrew Garfield as Jim Bakker has you forgetting he used to be Spider-man. Vincent D'Onofrio, meanwhile, plays Jerry Falwell as a sinister figure. It's a compelling performance, but lacks the affable, often jovial personality that Falwell displayed even when he was saying things I found reprehensible.
Jessica Hahn exists almost entirely off-camera. We see the consequences of Bakker's sexual encounter with her, but not what led to those consequences. Perhaps the filmmakers felt that even suggesting her version of events would have cost the tempered sympathy we're supposed to feel for Jim Bakker as his empire crumbles and he gets hauled off to prison for fraud and other financial crimes.
In the end we have an interesting, if fragmented biopic that depicts the rise and fall of a religious ministry driven by the trivial TV-culture and appalling greed of the eras that shaped it, and a portrait of one of the twentieth-century's strangest (and haunted) celebrities.
249 words