OK, first off I'd like to say that this movie and these forums are obviously always going to warrant Mormon bashing. "You don't hold the truth", "Yes we do", "No you don't", "Yes we do", and so on. To all you who are using this forum as a chance to express how wrong Mormon's are, please do it somewhere else, this is for movie reviews. Oh, and secondly, before you ever say if Mormon's are wrong, please go read the Book of Mormon FIRST and pray about it and THEN come say what you have to say. No one can tell you what's right, you have to find it out for yourself by personal witness.
OK, my intent was SO not to go ahead and attempt to respond to the "Mormon bashing". Holding that aside, and moving onto the movie....
It seems to me that as far as the movie goes there are basically two types of people. There are those who watch the movie looking for the spiritual message involved. To those people, I applaud you. You are the type who can go to church and most likely have your attitude changed that you may be able to leave church uplifted no matter who the speaker is. You do not judge that the speaker is a bad speaker, but rather you pay attention to what they are trying to say, and listen with the spirit on the same subject.
The second people are those who are bothered by the acting, and find it hard to get into the realism that this movie is trying to present and one of the purposes it is said to attempt. To these people, I am one of you, and wish I was the first.
I tried watching the first part of the movie with the attitude of the first type of people who watch this movie. Tried to look at the spiritual message, and the impact of such. I try to do that every time I watch a church movie (some of those older ones sure do have some pretty bad acting).
But I've been in drama, theater, etc, and I find myself wondering, "Couldn't this guy have done better??" I mean seriously, I've been in 8th grade musicals and plays where the acting was better. And it's not so much the actors fault, it's the director's. He very easily have found talented actors who had only ever been in plays to do many of these parts who we look up to.
As one said, Lehi seems to be made out to be a "pansy". I always read the Book of Mormon with Lehi being a prophet like what we have today, but who is concerned for his family's welfare. He is a father and a prophet, not a whiner.
I'm not going to pick apart each actor, and I have to admit I have not yet watched the whole movie either. I've been trying to get back in the spiritual mode and watch it again to see if I can get something more out of it.
I truly hope that if these guys are going to produce more volumes though, that they try to do better directing or script writing. Legacy was a church produced movie, and it had GREAT acting I thought, as WELL as a good spiritual feeling. Same with some of the other movies that have been done by the church.
I'll give this one another shot perhaps on a Sunday when I'm feeling a bit more uplifted and in tune. I was really hoping this could have been what I would have imagined it to have been. I sure do hope Work and the Glory doesn't get botched.
Again, to those who have thought this movie was great I applaud you. I'm trying to get to that point.
