Spencer Kornhauber has turned in a glibly critical review of Kanye West’s new film, Jesus Is King. He is not obliged to like West’s music now more than anyone had to like it before West’s deepened focus on the person of Christ. (West recorded “Jesus Walks” 15 years ago.)

As Kornhauber describes it, Jesus Is King sounds nearly as tedious as Goddfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, except that West’s film is 35 minutes, compared to 86 minutes of unsubtle imagery about the evils of using technology to ease our quotidian lives.

Still, there are some clunkers here that suggest an inattention to detail. In two paragraphs, Kornhauber makes the humorous point that having one’s hair dyed is an odd moment for a spiritual awakening:

West replied that his come-closer-to-Jesus episode happened around April, when he got his hair colored purple. “I remember when the hair dye was placed on my head the morning before Coachella,” he said. “It felt cold. I didn’t like it. I had an aversion to it. And then when the guy was dyeing it, I didn’t even like how it came out.”

As far as the beginnings of awakening stories go, this one’s definitely new. Bob Dylan had a cross thrown at him by a fan and then was visited by Christ in his hotel room. Kanye West got a bad dye job — and then what? Dunno. West changed the subject to the decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Hold the phone: a fan threw a cross at Dylan? What part of his body was the target? His head? His heart? His butt?

A simple click of the link provides the same language Dylan has used about this incident since the late 1970s: the fan tossed the small cross onto the stage. There’s no indication of its proximity to Dylan, much less where the fan had aimed.

Here’s something more substantial. Kornhauber writes:

The film made me think of funky, stucco mid-century churches, and the way they can seem like campy architectural artifacts today. It made me think of Jesus Freaks, and Hillsong, and all the other revival movements aimed at hipping up Christ.

Hipping up Christ?

Is that the problem the church has faced down through the ages, that its Lord isn’t quite hip enough for the room? Would it help if there were a New Testament in which Jesus scats his way through the Beatitudes, or addresses his disciples in the voice of Jay-Z?

Agreed, the cultural legacy of Jesus Freaks and Hillsong is not robust, especially to the extent that it remains grounded in ephemeral trends, but this language is cheap.

Here is the most perplexing sentence, filling a penultimate role: “It reminded me that religion and pop and fascism each revels in uniforms and shared, shouted praise.”

Fascism! Yes, friends, even gospel influenced by hip-hop is not safe from the totalitarian influences of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Why? Kornbauber does not say, other than that purported fondness for uniforms (usually called vestments in churches) and shouted praise, as though there’s little daylight between “Hallelujah” and “Heil Hitler.”

Any serious person — whether a musician with a wide influence, a journalist familiar with the rich history of call-and-response preaching, or anyone 40 or younger with a grasp of history that encompasses World War II — deserves better writing than that.