Grade:

Plot Summary:

Tartan, a 29-year-old single Mormon, moves to a rural town evenly divided between Mormons and Baptists. Can he find love and help the town unite the religious divide? Much 'quirkiness' ensues...

Opinion:

When you’re dating, sometimes you go out with absolutely amazing people whom you find exciting and interesting in many different ways, and who stay in your mind a long time after the date is over (“Wow! When can I see him/her again?”). And sometimes you go out with people whose personality or character really clash with your own and your memory of the event afterwards is more along the lines of: ‘Yuck…I can’t believe I went out with him/her! What a waste of time!’.

And...sometimes you go out with someone who’s remarkably…unremarkable. Someone who’s somewhat pleasant and inoffensive--such that you can stand being with them for a little while without pulling out your hair--but don’t have anything interesting, moving, or unique to offer you to make them worth thinking about in any context after the date is over. You don't despise them, but can’t really find anything to like either...

Movie watching is the same way…and “Baptists At Our Barbecue” is like that third person—it’s pleasant enough that it’s hard to actively hate it, but it certainly doesn’t offer anything to make you want to go out with it again, or even remember it a half-hour after the ‘date’ is over…

The setting of “Baptists” involves a small town in a never-specified state (unless I missed it…) outside of Utah consisting of 262 Baptists and 262 Mormons. Despite this equal mix, the movie is in its entirety told from the Mormon side (probably natural given the source), with those on the Baptist side constantly on the periphery. Also, despite having over 500 characters to choose from, we only really see at most 5-6 Baptists or Mormons taking part in the story.

The main character is Tartan, a 29-year-old single Mormon who’s never been outside of Utah, and takes a job in the aforementioned small town, breaking the fragile religious balance. (Since there are clearly not 262 people attending the LDS meeting, we know that there are many inactives—probably in both churches. The effect of inactives on the 'balance' of the town is never discussed…)

Tartan seems like a nice guy, although kind of bland—you can easily imagine his not being married at 29 is because girls found him falling solidly into dating category #3 above…kind of like a song you hear on the radio that you don’t hate enough to switch stations, but not good enough to make you go out and buy the CD. In the small town, he meets 25 year old--and newly-unattached--Charity (who, by contrast, would probably have you running to the music store, breathlessly asking the clerk if the CD is still in stock...)

You might have trouble recognizing initially that Charity is played by Heather Beers of “Charly”, with her ultra-straight hair and more laid-back attitude. (Don’t worry, if you've seen "Charly" you’ll figure it out soon enough. “Baptists” gives you LOTS of close-ups of her. And, hey...why wouldn't you? (1) It's Heather Beers, and (2) it’s not like anyone else in the movie is particularly photogenic…)

“Baptists” works best, in fact, when Tartan and Charity are talking to each other. Tartan shows a little more personality and energy, and Charity carries herself with wry dialogue and bemused smiles so that those scenes have at least a little bit of flair. Had the movie been entirely about their relationship, it might have had a better chance of success.

Alas, the movie has other things on its agenda, which are only sporadically successful. “Baptists” aims to be a quirky comedy in a small town filled with quirky people. Unfortunately, ‘quirky’ is difficult to pull off in a movie—usually, quirky characters just turn into shallow caricatures without any realism, and “Baptists” is no exception. None of the ‘unique’ denizens of Longfellow are particularly well-rounded or believable. And, the movies jumps from one to another so quickly, it’s hard to get to know nor provide a fulfilling character arc for any of them.

The other plot points and ‘messages’ of the movie turn out to be pretty muddled as well. We’re taught that we should tolerate others different than ourselves, but how the townspeople actually learned that lesson (and so quickly!) is a little vague. Likewise, a plot thread about a ‘bad’ character trying to redeem himself feels like a few vital scenes were missing (the ‘redeeming’ part, in fact, comes only as a voiceover at the end). The plot thread of who stole half of the LDS trailer doesn’t really amount to anything at the end, either.

The fact is, nothing other than the romance works in this movie, and although it's not a spectacular nor an offensive failure, there’s not really much to recommend “Baptists” as anything other than a cheap rental when there’s nothing better on the shelf to grab.

Content Analysis: (PG)

This is a “Church” movie, so it’s pretty clean. Tartan and Charity remain chaste (naturally), although there is some mild violence (note that the movie is not G…) and in one scene that may have been a little too serious for the tone of the movie, a house is deliberately set on fire, almost killing one of the main characters.

In-depth Analysis:

The underlying message of the movie is getting along with people different than you. In this movie, it’s Baptists and Mormons, although it could have been Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Muslims, blacks and whites, East Coast and West Coast rappers, etc… At no time does any actual church doctrine come into play in the movie, so the two groups could have been Democrats and Republicans for all it really mattered.

I’m not sure the definitions of the two groups mattered internally either. Once you’ve defined Us and Them in your mind, you stop thinking about why you don’t get along with Them (specific doctrinal differences or what) and just remember that They are different from Us…and that’s Bad.

There are a number of ways where this lesson of tolerance and inclusion could have been achieved in the course of the movie, and the movie happened to choose one of the least effective methods (a strange ‘miraculous’ sound in the mountains? If that was supposed to be a subtle comment about how uneducated people treat ‘miracles’ and how easily they can change prejudices, it was too subtle for me…)

Other, better methods of achieving religious unity amid conflict could have included:

An inter-faith romance (problematic, because of the LDS policy of marrying within the faith. The movie seems to hint at one such romance at the end, though...)
A natural disaster, where the two sides have to band together to help the community survive. (The fire could have served this purpose in a different context...)
Some other form of combined service project where the two sides have to work together to accomplish a common goal.

I would think any of these methods would have provided a more fulfilling and meaningful reconciliation between the two sides in the end.

I noted earlier the movie was—understandably—very LDS-centric, but fortunately not LDS-biased. The Baptist/Mormon divide was not (from the LDS side) just They Hate Us, but also We Hate Them Back. The Mormons in Longfellow were depicted as being just as prejudiced against the other side as the Baptists were—perhaps more. The movie could have made a major misstep by making the Saints…um, ‘saints’—where they were naturally and whole-heartedly ready and willing from the beginning to love and accept Them, if only They would let Us. By showing that the Mormons really genuinely didn’t want to associate with the Baptists in any way, is one way the movie managed to hit a spot of realism.

Random Notes & Comments:

(1) Rich was so obviously the prime suspect in the stealing of the LDS chapel, that (of course) I figured it couldn’t be him. The real obvious prime suspect in stealing the chapel would have been Sister Wyngate, who had shown her opposition to virtually everything the other Mormons had been doing since the beginning. Plus, having a Mormon be the culprit would have fit in nicely with the unifying theme of the story, since in the end it would have been shown that it wasn't a Baptist responsible for it, as all the Mormons originally thought. Alas, the movie couldn’t even get that obvious plot point right—the entire stealing the chapel subplot was pretty meaningless, with an even more meaningless conclusion (“Yeah, I stole it…and I forgot where I left it”) (?)

(2) Similarly, Rich doesn' t appear to suffer any consequences for burning down a house and almost killing someone, and stealing the trailer (add in assault, too...) We hear about him starting a new profession, but nothing about the legal consequences of his actions. Tartan seems to get off easy for his (admittedly smaller) mistake of lying to Charity...

(3) While the reverse is obvious, I'm not sure I buy why Heather Beers' character would actually fall in love with Tartan...and I didn't really buy why her character would choose the guy she did in "Charly" either (Heather's only other movie of which I'm aware). Both guys are kind of bland and unremarkable... Of course, if the script says they get together in the end then there's not much you can do, but maybe we should start a petition to get Heather a better 'boyfriend' in her next movie...

The Baron of Deseret

Thoughts and essays about all things secular and spiritual from a Latter-Day Saint perspective.

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Baptists At Our Barbecue