Mormon cinema: going to the well a few hundred times too often

Sometimes I think people in the church have interpreted the Savior's commandment to be as innocent as sheep and as wise as serpents to mean being as dumb as a herd of buffalo stampeded by our First Nations towards their grisly end (it's a Southern Alberta thing). At least you would think so by their preferences in entertainment, and particularly the Utah-centric "Mormon" flicks being produced by Halestorm Entertainment with assembly-line speed and efficiency.

I admit that I liked The Singles Ward when it came out a few years ago, but I wonder if it was more for the novelty of seeing LDS culture spoofed on the big screen than the quality of the movie itself. Don't get me wrong -- there's plenty to lampoon about LDS culture; it's the Halestorm formula that's wearing thin. Although I respect independent filmmaking in general and understand the financial risks these filmmakers take, Halestorm is just getting plain lazy where it comes to originality.

Take Mobsters and Mormons. Although slightly original in the way it takes its fish-out-of-water lead character -- a mobster being protected by the witness protection program -- and plants him in the middle of Sappy Valley, you can predict not just every upcoming scene, but just about every upcoming line of dialogue. One particularly excruciating example is a scene where the lead LDS character and his wife explain in excruciating detail about how they don't drink alcohol OR coffee OR this OR that and "Some members choose to drink cola drinks, but we choose not to" which of course leads the Mobster to make a joke you can see coming five minutes beforehand.

The Italian mobster characters are, of course, caricatures. Now, I'm not an exceptionally PC sort -- racial humor can be funny if done with a certain amount of taste. However, it's only funny when the person making the joke actually knows something about the culture he's spoofing. It's hard to believe the writers of Mobsters and Mormons have even been east of the Utah state line, let alone all the way to New Jersey to hear how real Italian mobsters might talk or act. So where do they get their characterizations? Other movies, of course. Problem is, second- or third-hand jokes are just not that funny.

I think Halestorm is missing a lot of opportunities to tell stories about LDS people outside the Mormon bubble of Utah. Furthermore, they're missing opportunities to tell really compelling stories about LDS history. I would love to see a film on Joseph Smith that did not concentrate so much on his role as prophet but more on his role as American icon. It could easily capture the Fifth Amendment crowd by tying in American themes of freedom of speech and religion (and attempts to rob people of those freedoms). Hell, if you can wrap Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt up in the Constitution, surely you can do the same with Joseph Smith.

And then there's the concept of making movies that are not really about Mormons at all but are just good, clean fun. Napoleon Dynamite is a perfect example -- just dumb, harmless fun with no real message at all other than the importance of "skilz."

Anyway, I know I'm not the one putting up the financing for these movies (other than paying to see the movies, of course), but c'mon guys -- get your hearts and minds out of Utah and give us something original already.