It’s a great idea for a script: a successful director of disreputable erotic thrillers sinks his heart and soul into an uplifting crowd-pleaser about warmth, piety and family values. Such are the circumstances surrounding the production of The Gospel, which plays like an attempt by writer-director Rob Hardy to atone for his previous, profitable soft-core debacles Trois and Pandora’s Box. How else to interpret a film in which a salacious, booty-calling R&B star, David Taylor (Boris Kodjoe), chooses the earthy comforts of a modest Atlanta church over the earthly delights of the secular world?

Hardy may fancy himself a prodigal son, but he’s no prodigy: The Gospel is badly written, flatly directed and embarrassingly mawkish. David’s return to the fold is occasioned by the illness of his father (Clifton Powell), a respected bishop whose admirably old-school attitude towards faith-mongering (“we need to spend less time looking good, and more time being good”) does not extend to his ambitious but corruptible successor Charles (Idris Elba), David’s childhood pal. He’s fine with looking good, and the bishop’s death gives him an opening to overhaul his cash-strapped chapel and congregation in his own vainly inflated self-image. Luckily, David puts the kibosh on his former friend’s power grab, assembling an all-star cadre of gospel stars for a fundraising concert. The church is saved, but sadly, this maladroit movie is beyond redemption.

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