This has got to be one of the most tedious films ever shot. Writer/director Kurt Hale (The Singles Ward, The RM, The Home Teachers, Church Ball) goes back to the story that put him on the map.

Since 2000, when writer/director Richard Dutcher successfully released God's Army, a comedy about Mormon missionaries, there has been a string of films written, directed, produced and starring Mormons by and for an audience largely of Mormons. Successful on their own terms, Mormon Cinema - sometimes dubbed Mollywood (a contraction of Molly Mormon and Hollywood) - has produced an amazing bang for the buck. God's Army only grossed 2.6 million but given its meager production budget of $300,000 - it's the kind of success that attracts investors of all stripes.

Written by John E. Moyer and directed by Kurt Hale, The Singles Ward is remembered as "the 1st LDS comedy." It told the story of Jonathan Jordan (Will Swenson), a returned missionary whose temple marriage goes bust, throwing him back into an LDS singles ward. Based on a low budget/no budget similar to God's Army, The Singles Ward grosed $1.3 million - enough to ensure that Moyer and Hale would keep making movies for Mormons. In 2003, the pair released The R.M. ($1.1 million), but their 2004 release, The Home Teachers, grossed just under $204,000. In 2005, Moyer wrote and directed his own project, Mobsters and Mormons, which did grossed $409,000 - still far short of the duo's previous success. Hale's 2006 endeavor, Church Ball (cowritten with Paul Eagleston and Stephen Rose) fared little better, grossing $465,000.

Stymied in their attempt to recreate the successes of their first two films, Hale and Moyer turned to sequelizing The Singles Ward as The Singles 2nd Ward.

The film begins with a phone call waking Christine (Erin Chambers) up at 7 on a Saturday morning. Its her home teacher, calling the first day of the month, to make schedule a visit. This "howler" requires the first of what will be an endless number of audience asides as characters break the fourth wall to share with us the little kinks of Mormon culture. This one is the joke about the over-eager home teacher (calling early, the first day of the month) because Mormons are so darned friendly it hurts. Christine is a young woman entering life in a new singles ward, something she dreads because of all of its (hee hee) Mormon quirks.

One of those quirks is the Death Race 2000 between unmarried Mormon women in a singles ward. All facing the prospect of old-maid status in a culture that eats, drinks and farts temple marriage and family life, Christine feels like she's a buck of chum being tossed to the sharks.

One of those "sharks" is Dallen (Kirby Heybourne), one of the characters from The Singles Ward. The moment he lays eyes on Christine, Dallen goes a big slobbery ga-ga all over Christine. This movie's idea of a big, awkward, moment is to have Dallen go into "slow clap," one of the film's many attempts at spoof without actually knowing what or how to spoof (In a later scene, a police cruiser squeals around corners, then does it again at 5 mph).

Dallen, who is teaching Mormon Mythology, is ready to give up on eternal marriage as he has been passed over so many times he thinks he's going to have to sit this one out. But when he meets Christine, hope is renewed - that is, until he "meets the parents," who are non-Mormons and who don't understand these strange Mormon ways. The film's big crisis comes when Christine, who fears losing her parents, has to tell them that they can't attend the temple wedding, which is off-limits to non-members. There's a moment when poor Dallen gets so weepy and swollen-eyed, you'd think he'd never done the math.

And that's probably as good a metaphor as we're going to get for why this film is such a dud. It's not that Mormon life isn't without its humorous quirks but Singles 2nd Ward is so insular, there's no reason to break the fourth wall and go into an audience aside. The only people who could possibly enjoy this are Mormons already. Even then, the jokes are both insulting and dull-witted. Hale and Moyer want to skewer Mormon culture - particularly the meat market atmosphere of LDS singles wards - but they've already done that with the first film. This leaves them little to do except have characters walk around, mouthing their thoughts and babble one-liners at each other. If those one-liners were actually witty rejoinders, we could at least enjoy some of the stand-up Moyer has tried to make a career out of developing. Instead, these people commit the fatal error common to many a bad comedy: They confuse cute with clever.

As a freshman at BYU, I attended a singles ward, one of countless student congregations holding church in different buildings on the campus of a university with 28,000 students. It was, indeed, a "weird" experience, a veritable "meat market," filled with returned missionaries, lovely young women still "on the market," and an odd assortment of "losers" getting older by the second. I remember the fat guy always on the make for a young thing who was already engaged - and who liked to play her protector, because that was as close as he was about to get. I remember the control freak with the camaro and his fiancee whose two sisters looked like pre-Colombian innocents in a movie about the lust of Columbus's lonely crew. I remember the bug-eyed 30-year-old who believed he had created a time machine. I remember the three witches from MacBeth, the hags 30-year-old hags who hated everybody who was in love, and who couldn't bear their testimony without mentioning all those "lovely people who are so, so, so in love." There was the sweet, near-albino whose ancestors had been polygamists. There was a tall-and-angry 20-something who could have played center for the NFL. There was the nasal ecclesiastical leader who sounded like Richard Simmons.

My experience with LDS singles wards was far funnier than anything I saw in this film, perhaps because this film has less to do with life in a singles ward than with making a cheap Mormon copy of Meet the Parents. Even then, it might have had something to say if it had tried to do that. Instead, it's just a lazily drafted clotheline for lame jokes that sputter more than spark. I didn't laugh until a scene near the end, when the hero hurls a cinderblock at his girlfriend's window. The resulting property damage brings the cops, who approach him accusingly, till he tells them he's trying to hail his fiancee, whom he desperatey wants to marry. Then, as if this were a code all Mormon men could respond to, all three men are calling out for her.

What made me laugh was when the girl's roommates yell down and the cops draw their guns, a completely absurd moment but one that hit a nerve. Finally.

Too much of Mormon Cinema is too derivative. It doesn't want to laugh at the Mormon experience so much as Mormonize whatever Hollywood hit the filmmakers hope to cannibalize. It's a strategy destined to doom Mormon Cinema to perpetual provincial status. Only when "Mormon" film centers on the human experience - rather than hiding behind silly caricatures of Mormons - will it go anywhere. The indie flick, Napoleon Dynamite, shot in Mormon Idaho, by Mormons and starring Mormon Josh Heder, was far more successful - precisely because it held universal appeal. Simply put, there's no great audience for Mormons making fun of Mormon life, to a Mormon audience, while imitating the non-Mormon movie of the moment.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8