I think many folks will enjoy this film more than I did. I enjoyed this film about half the time when I was able to look past things that were bothering me.

As I noted in part one of my review of the LDS film festival, the writer/producer/director Ron Hensen said in surveys of audiences at test screenings they got positive responses from every demographic except mine - the 25-35 year old age group. This review I hope will give him a window on some possible reasons.

The chief thing that not only didn’t reach but deterred me from this film was the music. To my likings most of it was very hard to bear, and almost unending. It felt like watching a music video with incedental dialogue, it was so distracting. This may not have distracted me if I liked most of the music and if when it was in a scene it was not so often so loud. Many times it was hard to tell whether it was supposed to be part of the stage/scene environment or suggestive of something to feel. When the music worked for me it was usually in the wild and jovial parts of the film, which many times WERE funny, to the writer/directors and actors credit. Where the music often didn’t work for me was in the sweet parts of the film, which were also usually genuine I felt on the part of the actors and script. When the music was sentimental it often feld over-the top for me, and I could tell that I would enjoy the sweeter moments of the film without it or with much subtler music. I really believe that if I saw this again with three fourths of the music taken out I’d enjoy it a LOT more. At one point (I don’t remember which) I just got angry at the film and wanted to stand up and shout SHUT THE DANG MUSIC OFF! Which I think may be very ironic coming from a gen-x-er to the older generation that made this film.

But as I say, I believe many others will enjoy this film more than me, because the others in the crowd were enjoying themselves more than me, and walked out smiling.

The actors were generally solid in their parts I thought, the script holding together well (but less solidly) on its own ground. People often complain of implausibility in comedies (and many critics did of Mobsters and Mormons), but I tend to not mind implausibility in comedies for three reasons 1)Often the whole point is that it’s rediculous or unbelievable 2)Rediculous and unbelievable things actaully happen in people’s lives and 3)Film is a dang contrivance already, and the whole reason we go to a theater is to suspend disbelief for an hour or two. We often actually demand believably unbelievable things, which is insane. But that said, the implausability of this premise was actually too much for me. I wanted it either more rotten or more silly.

[spoiler - if you don’t want to know the premise or plot skip to the next bracket]

I thought there was a major oversight of the depth of the problem the juvenile delinquints caused when they hijacked the missionaries’ car. They left those missionaries in the middle of nowhere to die. The delinquints themselves said they would die where they were without help - and then left someone else for this. I believe they would be far more cognizant of this problem of killing someone then the film let on - they would have to be much shabbier, amoral characters than the film made them for me to believe it, and then it would have to go into dark comedy, which I may not have disliked if it was done right. But the missionaries were left to wander through a desert fending for their very lives and we are supposed to laugh at this, and when they finally meet the delinquints they bear no resentment at all. I’ve known very few missionaries who didn’t bear serious resentment when so crossed :) so if that’s a point of their virtue some other character should at least have commented on it. Instead the missionaries just show up after the revelation of the posing delinquints and all is well. No way. I didn’t buy that. I’d have decked those delinquints if I was either elder. For the (apparent) innocence the delinquints had I would more believe it if they tried to pursuade the missionaries to give them a ride somewhere and simply lied about thier origins. Either that or with youthful naivete actually laugh in shallow and disturbed amusement that the missionaries would die.

I thought I would have much more enjoyed the “missionaries” bearing their testimonies if the whole scene played out and didn’t turn into a collage.

I was tired, oh so tired, of the jokes playing around the Word of Wisdom, which in retrospect felt like they were half of the first third of the film (whether they truly were or not - just for how glaring and cheeky they were - even smug I’d say). If there are no other points of cultural conflict between mormons and the rest of the world than this, maybe mormons are really far more in the world than we should be..

When they met the black cowboy it was like oh my GOSH! - a black cowboy! Wow - it totally broke the proscenium and felt very self-consciously, self-congratulatorily, deliberately multi-ethnic. I wanted to groan out loud in the theater but withheld myself, because I think black people are human beings too, but I don’t have to make an inordinate point of it. I actually felt it was condescending if unintentionally so. I have no such problem with many other films that portray various races. It’s really too bad he wasn’t a black gay cowboy..

[end spoilers]

There were a few times when I thought the acting was just unbearably cheeky and hammy, but I thought on the whole the characters came accross believably - in writing and acting - as who they were. But I didn’t much care about them. The only thing the film initially presented for them was to escape their trappings. I wanted to know more about their likes/dislikes/history then the film ever disclosed. I DID find their background more interesting as it was revealed later - but didn’t get enough from the “southern” one. I think I’d have had more emotional involvement if I knew about thier families to begin with or if thier isolation was contrasted with more fully realized minor characters who pulled at them.

In summary, this film was overall pretty entertaining (outside my differing musical tastes), and again, I enjoyed it, and believe many others will more than me.

I’ll likely have more thoughts than this over the days (I mull things), but I digress - aside from some unrelated and philosophical postscripts :)

p.s. There were about ten people in the theater. I snuck over to see the end of States of Grace afterwards - it was three-fourths full. And what a contrast! The film holding together in every element and grabbing my attention and sympathies all the way through.

p.p.s. I wonder that this film wasn’t structured to make it do what the writer wanted, not what the characters or situations in it demanded. I don’t believe there should be much science to the creative aspect of film making - but more poetry. Take it where it goes even if your stomach goes against it, because if your stomach goes against where it goes, it means you have fallen in love with it and you want the best for what is going on even if the best isn’t going on - and it will be more satisfying if/when the story characters make up their mind that they want the same. Or in tragedy, more appropriately devastating if they don’t. Alternately, if you preconcieve films to go into harder places, the conflict may be so pent up as to be rediculous (I think the writers on THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA often played up conflict to the point of rediculous - and actually dehumanizing).