I saw this movie out of boredom, and for $6.75, all I got was more boredom. Boredom and PAIN! Hence my summary. After about twenty minutes of watching THE BOOK OF MORMON THE MOVIE, that's exactly what I was thinking. This is a lot like those terrible made-for-video Christian movies of the Bible, except this time it's with the Book of Mormon. As with those, this is a cheapie. The costumes, sets, props, and special effects are all bargain-basement. The script is filled with horrible dialogue laced with "thou"s and "thee"s in an attempt to sound authentic. The actors don't help things along either, seeming more like they're in a school play than a movie. Gary Rogers directs, writes, and produces for the first time, and boy does it show! The script is no more than plodding samples from the book which fail to develop character and pushes it's points home with the force of a jackhamer. Subtlety is blasphemy, I guess. The bad characters look angry in every shot and the good characters just look stupid. Nephi is your typical muscle man who looks around like he's blind, prays, gets tied up, prays, scolds his brothers, prays, is set upon by his brothers, prays... I mean it goes on forever! There isn't even the illusion of pacing. And the Utah desert is not a convincing Jerusalem. The Joseph Smith wrap-around consists of two scenes and a partial montage and is a cheap as the rest of the picture. The "golden tablets" are unmistakably plastic. Some people marvel that this was made for under $2 million, but it looks really bad, even for an independent film. And considering that MAD MAX, CLERKS, and BLOOD GUTS BULLETS AND OCTANE cost collectively less than this movie, THE BOOK OF MORMON MOVIE is a truly pathetic failure. Nobody should see this. It's not a good religious film and the laughs you get out of the ineptitude of it all won't diminish the pain.
