The R.M.

Jared is a young Mormon man who has just finished his two year missionary stint. He believes he is coming back to a job and plans on proposing to his longtime girlfriend. Horrors! After buying the ring, he learns his girlfriend is two weeks away from marrying someone else and his job is down the drain, too. Not only that, but his parents have sold his car and adopted a young man who is now inhabiting Jared's old room! Whew. Well, there is the den and Jared snags a job as a repo man for a rental company, among other prospects. And, he valiantly tries to sell the ring to improve his cash flow. But, things look up when he meets Kelly. She is the daughter of an important church man and she is beautiful. Can she possibly be interested in Jared? Everyone will take a shine to this film whether they are Mormon or not. The actors are engaging and funny, the script is snappy and the production values are good. There are a few insider jokes about Mormons which may fly over the viewer's head but it does not matter in the long run. If you are searching for another romantic comedy with good principles, put your faith in this review and find this movie. The film delivers a dose of happiness for any member of the viewing audience.

A review here compares this movie to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Being a Greek Mormon myself, I concur to a certain degree. The performances were good, Kirby Heyborne's facial expressions and reactions really carry the movie, Will Swenson more or less reprises his role from Single's Ward and Britani Bateman perfectly balances Mormon moral principles, in every sense, and being plain hot. The first half of the movie more than anything I felt sorry for the poor guy, although there were some good laughs, too. Most of the humor though is based on Mormon stereotypes - if You are not acquainted with that, I am afraid You will not get much out of this flick. I think that there is a message for Mormons, that righteousness always pays off, even it does not look like this at all, in the end you will ride with the hot general authorities daughter towards sunset; the message for non-Mormons IMHO is, "Mormons are an odd people, but they can laugh at themselves"

In the film "The R.M.", Jared Phelps, played by Kirby Heyborne, returns home from a two-year mission for his church. Out in 'the field' Jared lived the life of a missionary, teaching and preaching a spiritual message to complete strangers. When Phelps finally returns home, he finds that maybe he should have stayed out in the field. Upon his arrival to the airport, Jared finds no one there waiting for him. No friends. No family. No one. A bit disappointed, he justifies this by saying to a stranger: "My mom is probably just getting some flowers." His return to his house is even worse. He goes home, or at least to where home was two years ago, when he left for his mission, but his family has moved! Finally, upon arriving to his 'new' house, he learns that his family thought his return date home was a month later, his mom is pregnant with her seventh child, and the family now has a Tongan foreign exchange student living in the house and sleeping in Jared's bedroom. This is hardly the homecoming Jared anticipated. Not only that, but also after only a few days of being home, he finds out that he has lost his job, and his girlfriend is engaged to someone else. How awful! The movie continues with things that go wrong in Jared's post-mission life. After much prayer, Jared tries to adjust to life as a returned missionary.

The critical intention of director Kurt Hale was to show the audience how missionaries adjust to their lives after their missions, when they have to enter back into reality. The critical technique is obvious through the secondary characters, inside humor, and minor background music that help to make the movie greater.

I have lived in Utah for 12 years, and like another reviewer, I had seen part of this on a local TV station a couple of weeks ago, and thought what I saw was pretty funny, so I rented the DVD. The first half of the movie is hilarious! Nothing goes right for the main character after he returns from his mission to Wyoming (a big laugh right there...). My daughters and I laughed our heads off. Toward the end of the movie, the momentum was somewhat lost by the convoluted story. The movie tried to turn serious, and it came off as a bit preachy. It was a bit heavy handed toward "jack" Mormons and toward non-Mormons, as they are depicted as heavy drinkers and just all around bad people. It wasn't a bad movie, however, and we got some good laughs out of it. "Big Budah" the local radio personality did surprisingly well in his acting debut! The DVD has a lot of fun extras too. All in all, I recommend it for good family viewing and a few laughs.

There might be some people that think this movie was bad. However, being LDS I found this movie quite entertaining, and no I am not in Utah. I have never actually lived in Utah. That's beside the point, this movie was rather funny, and if you have ever served a mission, and experienced life afterwards it pretty much hit the nail on the head with how it feels. The story although a little far fetched is not distracting and some of the Mormon stereotypes are hilarious. All-in-all this movie is a good one to add to your collection especially if you are LDS. And by the way I thought that Wally Joyner was probably the funniest person in the whole movie. The only thing funnier was the cameo appearance of Donald Trump's hair. For those of you that have not seen it, watch the movie again and look at Wally Joyner's head as Jared (Kirby H.) finds out that he doesn't have a job anymore. Although it is dyed from the normal blonde hue, you can totally tell it is Trump's toupee.

7 out of 10