Meet the Mormons

Thanks for stopping by OON. I miss you, pal.

Glad you liked the movie. The only way I’ll probably see it is if/when it comes out on Netflix (which many in our areas seem to think is a given). I agree that someone curious about the church is more likely to watch it on Netflix where they’re already paying a monthly fee and can watch when they want in the comfort of their own living room rather than paying to see it in a theater on it schedule. Heck, I do that with lots of movies (I also wait for Redbox).

Saw a post from Shawn that I wanted to respond to, and since I’m already here disturbing your peace, I thought I’d start a thread on the “Meet the Mormons” movie…I saw it over the weekend, and have to admit that I liked it. A lot of ‘reviews’ are critical of it as a propaganda piece. I’m not sure what they expected, but of course it is propaganda. I liked, however, that from its first few minutes, it positioned itself as a direct attempt to define ourselves, rather than to be defined by others…The stories are touching. I mean, you’d have to be a real jerk not to feel some level of gratitude that Dawn Armstrong met the Mormons…I found it sort of like the “Because of Him” video, in that it stripped away the harder elements of the church that so many focus on with with x-ray vision, and got to the heart of the matter…in this case, that Mormons are good people who are driven by a sense of optimism…Most of the stories seemed familiar and fairly representative of so many wonderful people in the Church…I was curious to hear from the folks here.

I haven’t seen the movie yet and to be honest it’s pretty far down on the list of movies I would want to take the time to watch but I like the way you have maintained such a patient and respectful attitude about this kind of thing after losing faith in the Church. Maybe I’ll get to that point eventually but when I heard about this film I had many different cynical knee-jerk reactions to the idea. To me it basically sounds like a feature-film length “I’m a Mormon” commercial where the general idea is something along the lines of, “Mormons aren’t weird, Mormons are people too.” One thing that bothered me about these commercials is that they would show some superficial diversity as if you don’t need to look like the typical Mormon to be Mormon but in reality the Church is all about strict conformity and expecting members to all act the same way and believe exactly the same things at least when it comes to the fairly long list of temple worthiness points and other strongly emphasized doctrines.

Admittedly facebook discussions are meaningless.

Yup.

I’ve met us, so I’m not likely to go see it, and also I don’t like this type of film generally, but I do think the Netflix idea makes a lot of sense.

Sounds like Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us”.

I love that Pogo!

I saw the movie and I really like it. I am really surprised. It was about good people doing good things and I really connected with that. There was some heart sell tactics but I expected that and the places they filmed at were very beautiful and made me want to go there. I have always been a sucker for mormon movies and even with some of my angry feelings for the church at times I still dig the ideas of what the church tries to teach. If you don’t see it in the theatre try to get at redbox. By the way there were only 6 people in the theatre at the 7:55 show time.

I hope no one minds me bumping this back up but I finally saw “Meet the Mormons”. I’d bought the DVD for my wife’s birthday and we watched it the other night. I found it overall a bit bland. I’m glad I didn’t see it in the theater (my wife kept hinting she wanted to go see it) but it wasn’t bad. The Candy Bomber story, of course, is compelling but I didn’t feel it fit well with the other stories presented. The best vignette was the last one “The Missionary Mom” and I think it works because it demonstrated the potential of the gospel to transform us in very positive ways. And I think that was what was missing from the other stories…how the gospel makes us different and better.

But the thing I liked most of all was the Church’s effort at showing more diversity within its ranks. I hope this will edge those who think membership needs to be homogeneous away from that line of thinking. I made a comment about the movie to this effect yesterday in my rather homogeneous HPG yesterday

I like that part of it too NL. It may be a small thing…but I like the idea the church is sending by making the point…even if there is a long way to go in practicing it in our local units.

My guess is that you didn’t get kicked out for making the point in HPG. Right? That says something.