I can appreciate that there is a limited quantity of movies being made that specifically speak to the LDS market. I am even willing to say that the social history of the church (most poignantly in Utah County, Utah) has room for humor. However it didn't take any longer than thirty seconds into this film to see that this movie was a culmination of bad ideas getting together, inbreeding, and giving birth to other retarded bad ideas. This movie serves one purpose, and that is to ensure that all other movies made from here on out will be better than this. The dialogue and situations that are so quickly rehashed in the opening scenes should be a warning to you that Singles 2nd ward is without a doubt the worst movie HaleStorm has crapped out since the first time Kurt Hale said action.
The main "couple" in this film demonstrate what lack of chemistry can do to ruin what appears to be two otherwise capable and fairly attractive actors. After Kirby's acceptable performance in Saints and Soldiers, his reprisal of this nerdy, lovable, and socially naive guy from the first movie changes to a plausibly more mellow and grounded return missionary that has nowhere to go as far as character development. The choice of dramatic tension comes from a completely unnatural set of circumstances that were obviously written by someone who has spent so little time outside of "happy valley" that its almost as if human nature was never even a backdrop for how this story was supposed to climax.
Seriously-production team, are LDS people as 2 dimensional as this movie portrays? Is that how you view your potential audience?
In the end, what should have been a redeeming quality of the DVD, such as the deleted scenes and out-takes, ended up serving to further show the poor decision making abilities of the writer/director/producers. The deleted scenes had some of the best material. I actually laughed at the bar-b-cue scene between the two fathers of the betrothed couple. It was the best scene of the movie. Instead of enjoying it, I wondered what prompted them to leave that out of the movie and to leave in the random pieces of drivel that made the cut?
So in other words, I watched the movie and was disappointed. Then I watched the extra features and was further disappointed as the poor decision making continued by taking out the good parts. Just when I thought things couldn't be worse, they just got depressing. Is this the future of HaleStorm? Does this represent their best work? A straight to DVD release drowning the viewer in visual ipecac? No thanks. Please no trilogy!
The only reason a project like this was green lighted for production was because there is a big enough audience to, in lemming like fashion, trickle to your LDS friendly retailer and subscribe to the notion that you are supporting a good cause. Just because it is LDS doesn't mean it has to be less entertaining than staring at dust gathering.
Viewers of LDS media, please stop supporting this type of insult to intelligence and encourage the creators of this film to achieve what they are really capable of doing, and that is good honest work. Taking this straight to DVD release and using it as toilet paper is about the only use this movie will have. As far as entertaining and in uplifting your mind and heart to the powerful stories the gospel CAN have, this movie will make you want to repent for wasting what precious time we have on this earth on such light mindedness.
