Unfocused 'POPaganda' doesn't delve too deep

Serious consideration of English's agenda -- parody as a form of indictment -- would be welcome. But that's not what Pedro Carvajal's documentary ''POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English" provides. Opening today at the Museum of Fine Arts, the film is more a celebratory profile of English's antics, with on-camera raves from gallery owners, people on the street, fellow troublemakers (like the unstoppable sticker fiend Shepard Fairey), and English himself.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with this approach. It's just that English, who's tubby and affable with curly blond hair and a beard, comes off as petulant and surprisingly unable to explain some of his more vague ideas. Mostly, Carvajal tags along as English and his mates take over New York City billboards and paste up his own stuff.

A few of those shots go a long way. And after the film tosses in more awed testimonials from the likes of fast-food masochist Morgan Spurlock, who humorously dropped a few of English's pieces into ''Super Size Me," those hungry for discourse might inquire, ''Where's the beef?" The closest we get to any sort of exchange about English's guerilla tactics is an old clip of English's appearance on the long defunct ''Morton Downey Jr. Show." And even that is presented as an occasion for someone in Downey's audience to champion him.

Carvajal is a tireless chronicler of ''culture jamming" in New York's activist underworld -- rerouting corporate images to disrupt and redefine their meaning. In fact, he's already filmed variations of this movie at least twice. His ''Subvertising," from the mid-1990s, is particularly effective, using media critics and academics to consider the unconscious power of marketing images. ''POPaganda" began as a short subtitled ''The Art and Subversion of Ron English," which in many ways is preferable to its messier, less focused offspring.

As a feature, ''POPaganda" insistently pushes its ''corporations evil, Ron English saintly" message, without actually engaging the art itself and why a lot of it works and some does not. English's billboard aesthetic, in part, seems bred from a clash among Andy Warhol, the agitprop posters of Barbara Kruger, and a certain stoner affect.

As with most parodies, English's are best when the intent is as legible as the image it is aping. A billboard from last summer -- ''Support Our CEOs" in military stencil on a trippy camouflage background -- was incisive. In the film, we see him accept a dare from his wife to put up a billboard of Christ on the cross and a slogan that reads, ''Let's get drunk and kill Jesus." That one doesn't work. And the film doesn't bother to find anyone to tell English he's veered way off topic.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris @globe.com.

POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English
Directed by: Pedro Carvajal
With: Ron English
At: Museum of Fine Arts, various dates through Feb. 12
Running time: 78 minutes
Unrated
**½