Trek: The Movie

It's a genre flick. A group of Mormon teenagers participate in a three-day reenactment of the trek of a group of 19th Century settlers.

Or, as one character quips, "It's Mormon cosplay.

The cast performs with the melodramatic earnestness of a high school drama troupe. The script presents foreshadowing with a clumsiness that becomes slightly charming. The spiritual message is delivered with a heavy-handedness that is only a little hard to tolerate . But "Trek-The Movie" has a great heart and and it is most definitely family friendly. For the life of me I can't imagine what the MPAA saw or heard that motivated them to rate the movie "PG." If ever there was a live-action "G"-rated movie, this is it. 6.5 out of 10.

Trek both manages to pack emotion and comedy beautifully together. I WOULD RECOMMEND WATCHING THIS MOVIE!!!

Tom is a modern-day Utah teen who lost his faith a year ago during a traumatic experience. Now he's signed up for a three-day handcart journey, a re-enactment of the Mormon migration to Utah in the mid-1800s by dozens of high-schoolers. It's a sort of Mormon vision quest and a rite of passage. However, Tom's not feeling it. He says he doesn't wish to become another "Latter Day Droid": someone whose Mormon faith is automatic and unthinking. But Tom's dad bribes him with a winter ski pass and the deal is sealed.

The three-day trek across wilderness with his peers, pushing a handcart and living somewhat like the Utah pioneers of the 19th century affects most of the participants taking part in the re-enactment in very positive ways, teens and adults alike. I don't want to say much more about the movie because I'd prefer not to spoil it.

You don't need to be a Mormon to appreciate this movie. I'm not a member of the LDS church, for example. The movie's surprisingly unjaded, like a Hollywood teen film from the 1930s or 1940s starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. So it's a refreshing change from today's more jaded, more nuanced Hollywood with its infinite shades of gray.

The characters in "Trek" are unusually polite, unusually sensitive to each other. Even the teens. Even the "NoMo" (non-Mormon) teen from LA who is on the trek with the others. Yet these teens are still contemporary. A few speak hip-hop slang for example, which at least grounds the film in the present though it stretches credulity to hear such polite kids speak fly. I'm guessing this movie isn't going to get wide distribution. That's a shame.

We've seen many similar movies about loss of faith for other religions: Christian, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, etc. Now, the LDS church has one of these films too and it's uniquely Mormon, and uniquely flavored by the beautiful Utah scenery.

Everything was off. The age and aggressive bickering of the actors and characters. The kissing. The lack of food. The lack of ma's and pa's. I appreciate a company making a comedy film for LDS members, it just wasn't classy humor. What little spirituality there was was lost in its irreverence and stupidity.

This isn't supposed to be too serious, nor too preachy- and it succeeded in making a fine balance that clearly strives to include non-LDS peeps, while still making a film for our culture and people. It's also the funniest film by LDS people since Napoleon Dynamite, though I'm not comparing the two in terms of quality. It does better than most LDS films by better illuminating that there are very many different kinds of LDS people going through very different stages and angles of belief, which is critical for anyone intending to understand us- we come in both spiritual and non-spiritual types, in varying degrees of righteousness; but instead of having this come across like some kind of shocking revelation, the film deftly uses it to create much of its comedy.

And that's what this is, y'all- first and foremost, it's a comedy; so uptight mormons dissing this because it has a "swear word" in it, or something, can wait review art at a more mature age- because this film was more brave in portraying people as they are, and came across as having a more truly spiritual feeling because of it. I am surprised at how many non-preachy spiritual moments and lessons they were able to get into this, without it throwing the vibe into pretense- and it's because people need to learn truth slowly, and what they need from LDS people as much as anything is our hilarious example of happiness (we, the LDS people, clearly stand out as peculiar in all the best ways throughout the film- without apologizing, or trying too hard - to where I felt like everyone really should see this just for its anachronistic wisdom) and yet, because it really is at it's heart a comedy, I was surprised at how completely surreal and stagey and hilarious some of the jokes and characters were without steering it right out of reality. Somehow it comes across as our world, but full of larger than life characters- which is exactly the balance that The Church aims to produce.

Simply put, it's a gem that deserves to be seen. It's small, but way worth seeking out. Some of the characters were so funny that you could just tell that this would have been a bigger film if it had arrived at a more pure time in history- and yet, it's rarity makes it valuable; and it is also easily worth studying in film class as an example of how to make something clean accessible.

It's funny, warm, and spiritual- probably a true 8-9 out of 10, for me; but it gets extra credit for being so valuable- and for helping keep modern, cooler LDS filmmaking alive and well.