Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus

A travelogue unlike any other.

Made for the BBC, this travelogue of America's southern backwoods is both blessed and cursed by its fascination with the colorful--lively alt-country sounds and fancy word spinners like novelist Harry Crews.

A movie about identity that can't quite pinpoint its own, Andrew Douglas' road-trip documentary about the Deep South does eventually meander toward audience enlightenment.

Occasionally, this richly lyrical movie passes over the line separating sympathetic exploration from freak-show condescension.

Far too often, Douglas indulges his preference for the superficial over the substantive: The plentiful performance footage -- shot in overproduced, music-video fashion -- overwhelms the film, as do White’s purplish, faux-poetic musings.

Ultimately, pic feels very much like a romanticized, outsider's view of the South that willfully seeks out the culture's strangest, most weirdo aspects for other outsiders' gleeful delectation.

Tiresome, trite and choked with every lousy Dixie-fried stereotype imaginable.