Baptists at Our Barbecue

While watching this film I realized that individual elements of the film were actually interesting (a character whose world has been restricted by circumstances, religious groups at odds with one another) amusing (a sheriff with an endless supply of traffic cones, a Mormon who accidentally drinks vodka on a Sunday morning, a quilt obsessed old maid and a half a church) and even compelling (a mountain that mysteriously hums and a loser who finds redemption). But it just doesn't come together well and I'm reminded as to how challenging it can be to pull together elements and establish the right performances, musical cues and rhythms to make a movie watchable and enjoyable. The potential is here with this story of an innocent forest ranger trying to expand his world while bringing baptists and Mormons together and get the girl of his dreams but it just doesn't gel. The plot is almost incoherent at times, characters act eccentric without motivation (though the slushy guy is fairly funny) and the romantic storyline is not very compelling (though the two leads are pleasant to look at). I can't really recommend the film but I would give it an E for effort.

Not really a great movie, or a great use of talent, and the portrayal of the Church and the situation in the town was unbelievable and ridiculous, BUT: it had its very funny moments, and was clean. The underlying theme of getting along and resolving differences by bringing people of varying ideas together was apt and even noble. I'm a Mormon and I know my Baptist cousins are taught at we (Mormons) are going straight to hell, but they are still accepting of me and my family. Hence, to an extent, the movie rings true.

Just a note to the critics: This isn't a statement about Mormon doctrine or the grander social wars in our world or in American culture; this movie is, obviously, mostly an insider (to Mormons) poke-fun-at-ourselves type of movie. No reason to get all uppity about whether the movie took upon itself the most appropriate disparate subcultures of Christianity, or whether Mormons could truly accept anyone but others so (from the outside) similar.

I may not be mormon, but I LOVED this movie. It's cute, clean, and well worth watching. Not to mention, Tartan isn't too hard on the eyes either! Although the movie starts out somewhat slow, the love story soon comes into play between Tartan and Charity. I found myself cheering for the couple all the way through the movie. If you are a Christian, I would definitely recommend it. My only complaint is they never really tell you why the Baptists and the Mormons don't get along. I would have liked to have some more information of their differing theologies. I read up on the main actor, and it turns out that he is Mormon in real life too. But don't mistake this movie for evangelizing; it is subtle in its religious texts and does not force anything upon the viewer.

Baptists at Our Barbecue is a movie apparently produced primarily for a Mormon audience. By way of example, there are any number of inside jokes and references that Gentiles will probably miss entirely, a stark contrast to Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon where even outsiders get the jokes. But much like Lake Woebegon, the essential plot and almost comic innocence of the characters who populate this movie make it broadly appealing.

The story is simple enough: an unmarried, 29 year-old Mormon forest ranger decides to accept a transfer to the oddball town of Longfellow to escape the efforts of his mother (and the efforts of the mothers of every unmarried girl in Provo) to get him hitched. But Longfellow is no ordinary town. Tucked away somewhere in the beautiful Rockies, it is a community precisely divided between Baptists and Mormons. This balance, and the competition is engenders, essentially fuels the movie. Yes, there are the colorful and eccentric characters we have come to expect from small town settings ever since Andy Griffith introduced us to Barney, Floyd and the rest of the off-kilter residents of Mayberry; and there is the central love story between "Tartan," the main character, and the incredibly beautiful "Charity," played by Heather Beers. There is even an antagonist, the pathetic "Rich" who provides the movie's small amount of tension and danger.

What unfolds is general silliness wrapped around a deeper story of the Baptist and Mormon communities coming together. Recalling the original Star Trek episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," starring Frank Gorshin, the essential point of this movie is that while the Mormons and Baptists of Longfellow may see each other as starkly "different," to the eyes of outsiders they are in fact all but identical. Where skin-deep differences in "Let That Be…" led to tragedy, however, the characters in Barbecue eventually come to see that the differences are unimportant.

Neither the script nor the essential story call for great acting, and the cast does a more than decent job engaging us in the respective quirks of their characters. If there is one fault to be found in this movie it is that in an effort to depict the characters as completely wholesome, even essential human emotions are bleached out of existence. While the addition of graphic sex would NOT have improved the story one iota, the main character's lack of response when his house is torched by the local miscreant strikes a dissonant chord and somehow loses him the sympathy the audience has built for him. But this is a small quibble and maybe there really are towns like this somewhere where people just naturally and repeatedly turn the other cheek Would that it were so….we could all learn a lesson from such tolerance.

"Baptists at Our Barbecue" is the first movie I've seen in a long time that sent me out of the screening feeling great, happy to be alive, with a new love of other people...at least the first movie since "Napoleon Dynamite." This movie is full of overtly Mormon and Baptist characters, and yet it was accessible to everyone I saw it with, despite their wide range of beliefs. The story is about a small town of half Mormons and half Baptists, their bizarre religious feud, and the strange series of events that conspire to change their situation. It's also a love story, between an everyman forest ranger - twenty-nine, and convinced he might always be single - and a beautiful woman who comes to town to recover from a bad break-up. The town's bizarre feud makes things difficult for their relationship to progress, and yet brings them closer, as well, through a series of hilarious, surprising developments, and a sweet, touching ending that made me want to fall in love. It also made me feel grateful for the chance to break from laughing. ...My ribs hurt.