Movie Review: Sons of Provo

I watched this "mockumentary" of a Utah-based boy band at Dantzel's home. The first time I encountered anything related to the Sons of Provo was on my mission, when one of the zone leaders received the soundtrack in the mail on a burned CD. For a long time, a lot of us thought it was an actual boy band in Provo, only finding out months later (with much embarassment) that it was the soundtrack to a movie about a boy band.

Obviously, the songs seem fairly authentic (fooling a group of 19 to 21 year old boys who have been cloistered from the world - ok, we thought it was authentic), kind of the songs Weird Al would write if he was Mormon and, well, was in a boy band instead of playing polka on the accordian. It basically details the rise to fame for a boy band with incredibly bizarre and painfully awkward group dynamics. Most of the songs they sing are very sarcastic, and loaded with various jabs at Mormon culture and inside jokes. There are references to cultural halls, the Word of Wisdom, ward activities, Mormon cuisine and other very Mormon things. Some of the jokes are incredibly subtle, like the reference to having a nephew older than you (something that seems to happen quite a bit in Utah). This said, if you're not Mormon, you will not get this movie. At all.

The movie is fairly entertaining throughout the entire production. The "documentary feel" seems very forced at times, however, and the camera work is shoddy and very amateur, though I'm not sure if that's the feel they were going for. The jokes are a-plenty and deal with all aspects of Mormon life, though there were plenty of punches that hit too close to home. One of the characters, Danny, describes himself as a Mormon with Buddhist influences (of which I used to describe myself exactly in high school), though few of the things he does could be described as Buddhist at all. All the other members of the band merely tolerate his differences in thought, saying cautiously, "He has...interesting beliefs," emphasizing stereotypical Utah closed mindedness. In one scene, a teenager tearfully exclaims that when the boy band performed a rap song, she didn't feel it was a holy place and was waiting for her ecclesiastical advisor to pick her up. I'm not sure if poking fun at a teenager standing up for her beliefs and relying on her leaders to support her is really appropriate. We have a hard enough time getting youth to do that without a Mormon-made comedy making fun of it.

Thus, Sons of Provo falls into the same trap of every Mormon comedy. How do you walk the line between humorous and sacreligious? Singing about how if you start making out with a girl, "she won't be wearing white" at her wedding is funny, especially with lines such as "These two weeks together have been the sweetest of my life/My heart's prayer was answered when you agreed to be my wife," but I couldn't help but cringe during the song "Sweet Spirit," which while funny in the way it accurately depicts this tongue in cheek slang, can be horrendously mean spirited when they declare, "She's only getting married if they bring back polygamy." Almost all the songs have a very self-righteous, hypocritical feel, one telling you that some day you could be as spiritual as them, another detailing how you've offended them greatly but they will (graciously!) take the high road and forgive you, or another one mocking the common line in prayers asking God to "nourish and strengthen our bodies and do us the good we need," admitting "We say this every time though we're not sure what it means."

And it's not just the songs. Those little things the band does displaying their outrageous pride is funny at first, but eventually, the little trespasses into the sacred add up, and eventually most Mormons would grow a little uncomfortable at how often and nonchalantly they seem to mock sacred things and portray the entire denomination of Mormons as backwards, petty or downright ornery. Mimicing the unique doctrine of sustaining everything as a single body in a group meeting (with the leader Will manipulating it for his own controlling needs) and a coordinator for a ward activity coercing the band members by telling them to "think of the blessings" they'd receive being targets for a pie throwing contest (as if God really cared about this activity at all) will certainly raise the hackles of several more sensitive Mormons.

Certainly this type of subject is important to bring up and deal with as a Church, and it's obvious that this whole movie deals with a lot of the Utah hypocrisy one can find. Actually, they tend to bludgeon you over the head with it. With a giant hypocrisy cudgel. After a while, you get sick of it. How many jokes are they going to make about how fake we are? Poking fun at Utah hypocrisy is like sex in the stand-up comedy world: it's gauranteed to generate a few laughs, but it gets old really fast. But it's a proven method, and I'm sure we'll see this subject material time and time again as we're reminded through film and song that we can be terrible people. Sons of Provo, while humorous for the most part, is no real difference and brings nothing terribly new (except for a blasphemously hilarious soundtrack) to the Mormon pop culture scene.

Pros: There are some genuinely funny moments, and the songs are for the most part incredibly clever and well done.

Cons: It's the same old thing. Mormons are fake and apathetic, but every now and then, they can be pretty nice people. What a moral.

Next on the Docket: Baptists at Our Barbecue is next in order. Troy recommended it to me, saying it wasn't "that bad at all," and quickly adding that the book was much better. Let's hope Troy is right.