The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume 1: The Journey

A note, I am an active Latter-day Saint.

First the bad...

I doubt Jews in Jeresalem in 600 BC looked like Anglo-saxons. Please find people that at least look Jewish to play the parts of Jews.

The make-up; a white woman with brown make-up to make her look Aboriginal or Jewish still looks like a white woman with make-up.

This movie was low-budget, and it looked like it. Everything seemed artificial; costumes, sets, minatures, it felt cheap. It didn't seem aged are blended in.

Lehi preaching, it seems the only thing he says is "The City will be destroyed, don't you understand" over and over. Couldn't think of any other dialogue?

Where were the master or establishing shots? There were very few, they would have helped the movie feel more complete.

The language seems inconsitant, sometimes it's modern, sometimes it's King James English. Pick one and stick to it.

This movie came off as low-rent, this is especially noted when Nephi is struggling to get free from his binds and the audience is laughing, rather than sympathising. This is becasue some parts of the movie are cheesy and that results in the audience not taking it seriously.

Cheesy parts #1... the brothers getting shocked, should have just left that out. Makes it seems like Nephi has magic powers, comes off weak.

Cheesy parts #2... Lehi's fake beard, it changes once from long straight and grey to short curly white.

Cheesy Parts #3... The aging of the characters wasn't belivable.

Cheesy Parts #4... the voice of God depicted with a deep voice and allot of reverb, cliché. Find a new way to do this. How about a soft whisper?

Cheesy Parts #5... Lemuals re-action to the angel, supposed to be a serious moment but is laughable because of his reaction.

Cheesy Parts $5... The Lamanites at the end dancing around a fire with war paint. Comes off over the top.

Now the good...

The acting was good 95% of the time, Laman was the best acted in this film.

Laban being murdered, I really like how this was done (other than the clichéd treatment of the voice of God) and it had good emotion.

Nephi's vision of being shown was is to come, again good emotion, and good editing.

Montage while Nephi is bound, well done.

We get a good sense of the conflict between Nephi and Laman.

I thought that the added dialogue (stuff not from scriptures) was good and blended scenes well. I enjoyed the added homour and seeing Nephi and his brothers bond after having conflicts.

The Joseph Smith stuff I thought was well done, except Moroni's visit, just seemed out of place the way it was done.

Final word. Before the next one, take the time to secure more money and make it the way it should be, a grand epic. Pretty good job for a first time director and allot of first time actors. I wouldn't see this one again but I would see the next installment.

This project is something that many members of the LDS faith have wanted to see in motion picture form. Gary Rogers had the guts to step up and actually do it. Was this a good idea? Should a 'golden book' be made into a movie with a 'copper budget?'

Well it was done. The result is something extremely controversial. The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume 1 the Journey has pros and cons. What is good about the movie is Noah Danby (Nephi). That man can act! He can cry on the queue and make a stunt move that looks painful. Mark Gollaher (Lemuel) isn't so bad either! The rest of the cast have their moments but are weak or sappy most of the time.

The miniatures by Clark Shaffer, who has work for I.L.M. for years, are well done. The models are large (the great and spacious building was about 5 five feet tall!) and highly detailed. The shots with Jerusalem and the boat are forced perspective shots (bringing the model close to the camera, then the people further away, and using a special lens to focus it correctly). And some of them worked while others did not. The compositing was done well most of the time, with the exception of a close up of Nephi and the blurred figures in the background have a sharp edge against the ocean.

The music is good at parts but needed to conform to a Middle East feel rather than the Russian feel I believe it had. This could be done by being in a different key and using different instruments.

My favorite scene was when Nephi collapses in the desert and there is a rush of images and powerful sound in a 'Gladiator' type of moment. It catches the film up to that point in an interesting well done editing moment.

The biggest problems were:

Too much voice over!!! The reason that some people feel that the movie is 'slow paced' is not because it is slow paced at all. It actually covers a lot at the end with a fast pace. It drags, and the reason it drags is because Nephi narrates half the time while you see a slide-show of events.

The Automatic Dialog Replacement (ADR) did not match up. In other words you can tell when it was dubbed. And the sound quality was poor. This project was done on 24p High Definition cameras, the same cameras Lucas used for Episode 2, and the print job to 35mm film was not good. It lacked a full range of values and color. It was grainy at parts and doesn't look as clean as the HD source.

Some of the things important to the story were skipped; how did Nephi convince Ishmael and his family to leave into the wilderness? How did the boat get to sea and how did they land?

The costumes where lacking in quality and for some reason there are more fat people in Jerusalem than actual middle-eastern people. Most of all the camera angles lacked in creativity and greatness (I admit that I did like a couple of shots and the helicopter shots were cool). There are a lot of jump cuts because of lack of any other angle to cut to, mostly a big lack of coverage. This is due to many factors including: a low budget, a limited 30 day production shoot, and an underpaid crew.

The worst scene was probably the one between Sariah and Ishmael's wife. It was over dramatic and the dialog is feeding back story information to the audience. That isn't the best way to establish their closeness.

What's amazing that the budget was stretched beyond it's limits and that this thing actually got through production and post production and into theaters, unlike Richard Dutcher's Joseph Smith project. After seeing this one I have faith that Gary will make the next one better. And don't think that you'll see a big budget 'Mormon Movie' not put out by the LDS church, if The Book of Mormon Movie was made for $40 million, or anything else considered big budget, it would never make the money back. It's just too small of an audience. The reason the LDS church can put out movies like 'The Testements' is because they can fund the production and the people working on it well.

Personally I am not a fan of these 'Mormon Movies.' But this is what a lot of people asked for so this is what they get.

Having read the Book of Mormon several times (many more times of First Nephi - many LDS members will relate) I have to say that somehow much was missed in the true spirit of the book. There were a few shining moments, but they still paled in comparison to the genuine book. I would like to say that this was a good movie and recommend it to everyone, but I cannot honestly say this. I was among many that thought it would be a good idea to bring these scriptures to life in movie form, but when I actually saw this rendering I was disturbed. The embellishments distracted from the text too much to be believable and there were things in the text that should have been left in yet were absent.

I am not going to say "Don't watch the movie" because there was a lot of good things in the movie regardless. You have to look beyond the low-budget production and mediocre acting to see what the producers and actors really tried to portray with this movie. I guess the thing that this (or any movie based on scripture) does is that it puts a face to the characters. Whether you thought these characters played their parts well or not is a matter of research and personal taste. No matter who you cast as these characters you are going to find disagreements in this matter. I do have to agree that Lehi was a disappointment as well as some of the other actors. I believe Nephi, Laman and Laban were done well for the most part. You have to remember though that the people who wrote the Book of Mormon were ordinary people, many with extraordinary commissions by nature of their callings (prophets, missionaries, warriors, etc.), not necessarily literary experts - this doesn't even take into account that they were writing in a language that was awkward for them to write because there was limited space on the plates.

Since there are inaccuracies and deviations from the original scripture in this movie, which I (and many other LDS church members) have been distracted by, you must really read the Book of Mormon and rely on that as your sacred scripture rather than this movie. It is certainly good that it draws people to reading the scripture that wouldn't have read it before seeing the movie, but for me after reading, studying and praying about the book I would have to say "read the book with intent to find the truth, but watch the movie for entertainment and enlightenment."

Wow. I just got done seeing this movie, and I have to say, it was a dissapointment. I love the Book of Mormon, but this movie pretty much misses the mark on many levels. Poorly casted, the costumes were awful, the acting was fairly bad, the script was poorly adapted, the cinematography was flat and uninspiring, the movie was slow and very long. I just hope people do not go out to see this movie in order to see just what the "Mormons are all about". Please do not see this movie in substitution of reading the book. Don't use this movie as a followup, either. The power of this book is astounding, something the movie almost fails completely to do. It has one or two inspired moments, but that's it. Please, if you're interested in the Book of Mormon, contact missionaries or your LDS friends, you'll recieve a free copy from them.

Please, please, please, please, PLEEAAASE DO NOT MAKE ANY MORE OF THESE MOVIES!!!!

Your hearts are in the right place, I don't doubt that at all, but you are in way over your head with this!

If I had never read the Book of Mormon before, after watching this movie, I wouldn't want to!

You're costumes looked like they were borrowed from the Manti Pageant. The make-up looked ridiculous. The acting was amateurish, not to mention the directing. And the writing just plain SUCKED! And what the hell was up with that wedding dance scene?

You are doing a major disservice to the Book of Mormon and the LDS faith by making these movies.

Come on, to take on something as epic as the Book of Mormon on such a miniscule budget is at best, laughable, at worst sacrilegious. Even John Huston knew to only take on the first part of Genesis when he made "The Bible."

Have you seen the movie "And God Spoke... The Making of."???

Your movie is essentially that. A biblical epic made on a B-movie budget and you guys are taking yourselves waaaaay too seriously!

I only hope you haven't done any permanent damage to Jacque Gray's career.

-Nate