I saw the film yesterday. I saw it because I'm Mormon and I wanted to be able to respond to anyone else who saw it. I have run into a lot of misconceptions about my religion and I saw this film as an attempt to balance public opinion. It didn't start off well. The narrator was a young woman interviewing people in NYC asking what they knew about Mormons. The respondents gave all the book answers: multiple wives, confusing us with the Amish or some other religion, etc. While I have run across these same misconceptions from people who should know better, I still felt the first 5 minutes were somewhat insulting to an intelligent person. It gave it an infomercial feel. It got better after that. The remainder of the movie consisted of a series of interviews clips with six individual Mormons of different races and vocations. The stories included a black bishop from Atlanta, the Naval Academy Football Coach, a female mixed martial arts fighter from Costa Rica, the "Candy Bomber" from the Berlin Airlift, and a women who had been a single mother at age 16 and later turned her life around. The stories were uplifting and inspiring. To me the film addressed some of the more "traditional" misconceptions you would encounter in the "Bible Belt." It didn't address what many people consider today's controversial issues as you would find in the media such a gay marriage or ordination of women. If you want the more recent controversial issues, there was a PBS documentary a couple years ago which explored every controversy you could imagine. I'm sure it's on line somewhere. Just remember that to your average "Joe Mormon" the topics discussed in the movie (providing of our families, balancing work and home, overcoming past mistakes) are more relevant than what we read about in the media. So why would you want to see it if you weren't a Mormon? That's a good question. I usually go to the movies to see explosions or bad guys getting wasted. This doesn't have a lot of drama. It's not entertaining. It is a fairly accurate portrayal of Mormons in their natural habitat. I would want you to see it so that you would realize if you ever met me that I've never had any desire to live in Utah, I don't have multiple wives, and I am an engineer with multiple degrees working on advance projects. You would need to find your own reasons for seeing it.
Review of Meet the Mormons
