Baptists at Our Barbecue

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.

I felt compelled to write this after reading some of the negative reviews for Baptists at our Barbecue. I bought this DVD on a whim at Hollywood Video and it was just a lot of fun to watch.

Yes, it's clearly a low-budget little movie but I very much liked the actors and thought the did a great job. I'm not sure where some of the other reviewers are coming from in putting them down. It's a quirky movie with odd characters, most of whom are over-the-top. Would you expect subtlety? Other reviewers have criticized Heather Beers' performance as flat in the co-starring role. Maybe a little, but she is beautiful and pleasant and I'll be looking for her other movies, though I don't think there are many.

As for insider Mormon jokes, I felt like I got most if not all of the humor and I am not LDS. And I did find the movie to be funny in a gentle way. I don't know that I laughed out loud but it was enjoyable and, again, quirky without being strange or stupid. I like off-beat movies and I found this one to be easier to watch than, say, Big Fish or O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Finally, I really enjoyed the soundtrack. Much of the music just put a smile on my face.

"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.

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.

First, I'm not a Mormon, nor am I a Baptist (although I am a born-again Christian). Second, I'm a big indie fan (I generally hate blockbusters). Third, as much as I love movies, I'm tired of sex and cursing thrown in for no good reason than prurience, which generally distracts from the story line. Fourth, I love watching movies with my family (kids aged 13-23), but trying to find one that appeals to all age groups without insulting or embarrassing at least one at some level is quite a challenge.

How refreshing to see a movie that portrays religion as an integral part of life (as it is in my family and my circle of friends) without the main (religious) characters being portrayed as boorish, hypocritical, sanctimonious, etc. They're normal. And they consider God to be a normal part of their lives. Do I know boorish, hypocritical, and sanctimonious religious people? Of course I do. I also know NON-religious people who fall into that category. But the media generally presents religious people ONLY in those terms (or else totally wimpish and ineffective, like Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H). So there were boorish, hypocritical, and sanctimonious people, both Mormon and Baptist, in this movie. There are in my church, as well. But there are also good, well-meaning, and even just quirky people who are just doing their best in a world that teaches us to satisfy every personal desire ("Try every possible sexual permutation! You owe it to yourself!") than to try to discipline one's personal desires and do something that seems distasteful, even if it's the "right" thing to do ("Try reaching out to someone who is different from you -- even if you're scared. You both might learn something.")

Simplistic story? Maybe. Boy meets girl, boy may lose girl, etc. There is an element of The Wizard of Oz in here -- "There's no place like home," even if it's not the most exciting place. The acting was fine -- certainly no worse than many other (and much better-known) actors' efforts (Nicholas Cage comes to mind as an overpaid one-note -- or should I say one-whine -- "thespian"). Were there some clichéd situations presented (i.e., the wise Native American)? Yes, but again, no more so than in other multi-million cinematic efforts. Of course, since my personal beliefs are closer to Baptist than to Mormon, I would have preferred to have seen the story told from a Baptist-as-peacemaker perspective, but ultimately it made no difference.

Thanks, Christian Viussa. I hope to see more of your work in the future.