Today, 12 September 2003, THE BOOK OF MORMON MOVIE, VOLUME 1: THE JOURNEY opened its theatrical run in the Salt Lake area. The average rating given by four newspapers along the Wasatch front was TWO STARS. This came as no surprise to me, for I actually had little hope of this undertaking be able to live up to the challenges involved in doing such taxing project. With between 1 1/2 and 2 million dollars to work with you are stretching the budget a bit thin in trying to tell a historic happening such as The Book of Mormon requires. Having a director that had not worked in film before did not hold much promise for suceeding either. I decided to ignore the critics and just go see the movie for myself. So my wife and I attended the first showing of the day at one of the local theatres. Certainly there are weaknesses in this film -- BUT, the big thrill was it was much, much better then it had any right to be! The film has a powerful music score that adds a great deal to the effectiveness of its telling. Much of the acting is very fine. Gary Rogers, the director and co-script writer must be thrilled to see this dream project turn out as well as it has. Members of the LDS Church (the Mormons) will find this a marvelous film to experience together as a family. I will certainly recommend it to others as a film worth seeing in a theatrical setting and one worth purchasing on DVD when so released. Both my wife and I found the film to be both entertaining and spiritually enriching. So ignore the critics and just give the film a chance. And then pick up The Book of Mormon itself, and read or re-read the account found in I Nephi -- the world we live in needs this message desperately! Thanks Gary Rogers and all the hundreds of others who put their talents to work on this worthy project.
