Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Long setup + cryptic review = ??

Q: You don't go out to the movies like you once did.
A: That's true.
Q: How many movies last year? Five, six?
A: More like two!
Q: And this year...
A: One. Rachel Getting Married.
Q: The Anne Hathaway—
A: Yes. Slumdog Millionaire was sold out. I wasn't really sure what Rachel Getting Married was about—I don't think I knew it was a Jonathan Demme movie, even. But it was right across the street and the timing worked out.
Q: You've watched a lot of Hathaway movies.
A: [Laughs.] Oh, I don't know about that.
Q: Some of the lesser known titles in the canon.
A: Princess Diaries was really good. The sequel wasn't.
Q: You reviewed both of them.
A: Yes.
Q: And Ella Enchanted.
A: I did? Ella...hmmm. [Types.] Oh yes. I don't remember that movie very well.
Q: And the Mormon one.
A: What? Ohhhh....[Types.] Yes. Wait, here's the review, from the PTSNBN:

Though The Other Side of Heaven (Excel, opens April 12) is to Latter Day Saint proselytizing what Top Gun was to Air Force recruitment, this adaptation of John H. Groberg's memoir of his Tongan missionary years is strangely coy about its denominational allegiance. Indeed, for the first hour, Mormonism is the faith that dare not speak its name (Groberg's pa is cryptically referred to as "the only Democrat in Idaho Falls"), and the non-tithers among us must work with the evidence: the sock hop at BYU, the absence of crucifixes, the frosty reception given "Elder" John (Christopher Gorham) by the island's other Bible-thumper. Perhaps even the SLC high command found writer-director Mitch Davis's wall of kitsch hard going. Despite sole-gnawing rats and a woman of color up for a roll in the ferns, the white man's burden has rarely seemed lighter; straight-arrow John never wavers in his devotion to church and stateside squeeze (Anne Hathaway). When the mother of John's would-be seductress pleads for a "half-white baby," he shows her a picture of his beloved. Overcome with shame, the woman commences to sob.

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