The R.M.

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.

Being in the theatre and film industry myself, I've generally been critical of cheesy LDS comedies, but The RM was not cheesy. Almost all of the humor is based on exaggeration, some of it more exaggerated than others. The contrast between Relief Society and Elder's Quorum meetings, however, was almost right on the mark, right down to the doily on top of R.S. radio and the E.Q. instructor's plea to have someone read the first 6 pages of the lesson. Having grown up in the Idaho-Utah LDS culture myself, I found much of the humor about LDS culture delightful; though I expect that members of the church from other states may miss the humor that is aimed almost exclusively at the Idaho-Utah culture.

The RM fits into the farce genre, which does not require realism, depth of character, or a poignant moral, so if the viewer goes into the theatre expecting any of these, he or she is going to be disappointed.

My one criticism is that the film, perhaps in its attempt to portray the humorous elements of LDS society, comes across as cynical in many scenes, and the more critical LDS viewer may find this offensive. For example, contrary to the film's depiction, Elder's Quorums do have many elders who bring their manuals, who diligently prepare lessons, and who faithfully perform their home teaching--even in Idaho and Utah. It is doubtful this perceived cynicism is intended, and it is more likely that it is merely the byproduct of the film's attempt to maximize humor.

My wife and I found the film delightful. We found it far more entertaining than most of the comedies that prevail in movies theaters today--most of which are also farces, but that, despite their multi-million dollar casts, maximize humor with cheap sexual references, foul language, and cynical views of the America and the family and leave us feeling that we need to scrub our eyes and ears with a Brillo pad. Watch The RM. It's well worth your time.

The R.M. has some inspired moments, and generally treats the idea of a returned missionary with humor. All of the things that go wrong are generally predictable, but expressed in a humorous way.

There are problems with the film, however. The biggest is the film's racial insensitivity. Early in the movie, Jared Phelps finds that a Chinese-American family has moved into his old home. With vaguely Asian music in the background, Mr. Wong kicks Phelps in the face. Why does the Asian-American character have to be an expert in martial arts? Why is there Asian music in the background? This might not have been an issue had there been any other Asian-American characters, but there were not.

Similarly, the Tongan exchange student in the film is named Humuhumunukunukuapua. This is the name of the Hawaiian state fish. Would a French foreign exchange student have been named Bratwurst?

Another problem with the film is the blatant ad for utahweddings.com. While presented in a slightly humorous way, it's still clear that it's an ad, and takes up at least 2 minutes of screen time.

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