Mormon Movie Monday: Alma & King Noah's Court and The Home Teachers

I live in Salt Lake City, which is home to a certain number of "Peculiar People" (note the capitals and scare quotes). As such, I am exposed to many peculiarities of Mormon civilization, from young men in black suits and name tags to fry sauce and funeral potatoes.

Now, I was no babe in the woods as regards the religion of the American Moses when I moved to Utah's capital. I have had Mormon missionaries visit my house and give lessons, I have attended their church services on more than one occasions, and I have read their unique scriptures (The Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price) in their entirety, not to mention a wider swath of Mormon theological works than most missionaries.

But we will not be speaking of theological subtleties or records of supposed ancient American Jews. Instead, we will speak of the wastelands of Mormon popular culture: the Mormon Movie.

My friend and I are fond of visiting second-hand stores and buying as many $1-$2 Mormon movies as we can get our hands on. In part because I'm thinking of making a podcast out of this, and in part because it is a slow day at work, I'm going to write up my impressions of the two masterworks of Mormon Cinema we watched last night.

Believe it or not, the shining
 prophet is not Alma.
Neither is the little girl.

Movie #1 - Alma and King Noah's Court

This 2005 movie clocks in at 55 minutes and is part of the "Liken the Scriptures" series of child-friendly Mormon-produced adaptations of stories from the Bible and Book of Mormon. The story is framed around two missionaries talking to a family thinking of being baptized as Mormons about the persecution some may face as they seek the face of the Lord (such as schoolmates making fun of us for becoming Mormons).

The missionaries share the story of Alma, the ancient Nephite priest who worked beneath the corrupt, evil, and mean King Noah. If, for some reason, you want to read the original story, here it is.

The King Noah story is presented as a musical, and it is a musical that fails in perhaps the worst way imaginable. In short, all of the songs by the evil, nasty, naughty people in the story are fun, bouncy, and memorable. All of the songs by the holy and righteous prophets are boring, pious word slurries.

The general effect is that children will learn that King Noah was a cool dude who cared about peoples' feelings and threw awesome parties, while Alma was a wet blanket (literally, in the baptism scene). Even worse, the movie ends before King Noah gets his comeuppance, instead ending on a pretty great note for him.

Also, he looks like Meng Huo from Dynasty Warriors

This effect is heightened in the post-credits scene, where the cast, crew, and their very Mormon families through a King Noah-themed party, shouting out the lyrics of his song, wearing cool dude costumes, and generally having a good time partying with one of the greatest villains of the Book of Mormon.

However, for a non-Mormon audience, there is certainly some schadenfreude in watching Mormons boogie down with the Mormon equivalent of Pilate or Herod.

I can't find any YouTube clips, but Alma and King Noah's Court is available on Amazon Prime, so if you've got an hour to kill making fun of Mormons, you could do worse.

Movie #2 - The Home Teachers

With wild and crazy guys like this around,
Wacky hi-jinks are bound to abound!

Home Teachers are Mormons who visit the homes of other members once a month to share a brief message with them in their homes. It was used to help build relationships, reactivate backsliding members, and so on and so forth. Or at least, it was used for those things until the LDS church got rid of the program in 2018. Oh well.

But this religious comedy was released in 2004, while the Home Teaching program was still very much in place. So what happens when a football-loving schlub who just wants to relax and spend as little time in church as possible teams up with a straitlaced Scriptures On Tape salesman to bring the word of the Lord into the homes of innocent LDS members? With a classic buddy cop set up like this, hilarity should ensue!

"But MOOOOM, I wanna watch FOOTBALL!"

Unfortunately, it does not.

Watching this movie is like being on an 82 minute morphine drip. You can see that things intended to be humorous are happening on the screen, but you are too numb to react to them.

This is not the worst Mormon movie that I have seen, or even the one I hated the most. I feel an absence of emotion towards this movie. Fragments of scenes float into my memory, but I wonder if they truly happened or not. A grey fog descends upon my soul.

Me looking for my feelings on The Home Teachers

I have extra hatred for this movie because it's setup that should be impossible to mess up. The schlub Mormon learns to take God more seriously and the straitlaced Mormon learns to care about people and see where they're at instead of treating them like numbers. Funny fat man fall down, skinny serious man slip and fall in dog poo. It's such an overdone concept that it should be impossible to fail this bad.

And what makes it even worse is that the guys who made it have done decent work in the past. The Singles' Ward approaches legitimate goodness at times and The RM has some decent moments. But The Home Teachers, while not bad enough to inspire rage, is not good enough to inspire comedy. I would not watch it under any circumstances, including sexual bribes from hot Mormon women.