Review: The Home Teachers (C-)

The Home Teachers is the third movie from HaleStorm Entertainment, following The Singles Ward and The RM…and a major disappointment.

After making great strides in quality movie making between their first and second feature films, the stage was set for a great success with The Home Teachers but, alas, it ends up being BY FAR the worst of the three — taking a huge step back in almost every area.  The screenplay is the biggest problem, but it’s not helped by the subpar acting of the two leads — curious, because they are both veterans of other productions.

As mentioned in my reviews for the first two HaleStorm movies, the first and only criteria for a successful comedy is: Is it funny?  Unfortunately, the answer is ‘no’. Not ‘sometimes’, not ‘sporadically’, not even ‘every once in a while’. The Home Teachers just plain isn’t funny.

The main problem is that each major segment of the movie pretty much has one and only one joke…and it takes a LOOOOONG time to setup each one.  By the time they’re done, the audience has already guessed what direction the movie is going in and any humorous effect has been reduced.   And there’s nothing drearier than watching a movie that’s supposed to be funny, and tries to be funny, yet…isn’t.

The wait between ‘jokes’ could have been less tedious if it had been filled with clever dialogue and witty banter between the two leads, but this turns out to be another of The Home Teachers’ failings.  Greg and Nelson are set up in standard ‘Odd Couple’ fashion — completely opposite personalities who are forced to be together with both of them getting rubbed the wrong way by the other.

When done properly, it can be quite humorous as both companions use their unique perspective on things to drive the other up the wall, but here it’s mostly tiresome as the two of them don’t really have anything clever or witty to say.  They mostly argue about trivial things and it’s…well, not funny.

In keeping with the tradition of the first two movies, The Home Teachers stays with the humorous tone (in theory) for the first two thirds and then settles down in the end for a spiritual message.  The message (obviously) is about home teaching and is handled fairly well (I went and contacted the people I home teach the day after watching it), although it also is let down by the faulty screenplay:

Greg and Nelson are visiting their third home teaching family (this counts as a ‘spoiler’, if you really care…). It is clearly still light out when they arrive, and clearly dark when they leave — so they’ve obviously been there a fairly long period of time.  Greg feels they have some unfinished business so they go back and talk to her again. She shares with them her real problem and Nelson asks why she didn’t tell them about it before. “Well…you two seemed like you were in such a hurry!” she says.  Really?  They spent so much time in her house the first time that darkness fell, and even proper home teaching visits are supposed to be done within an hour. It doesn’t seem like they were in quite a ‘hurry’, does it…?

The Home Teachers I think was flawed from the beginning. Kurt Hale wanted to do a movie about home teaching but didn’t really have enough ideas to fill a whole feature film. (Even with the long joke setups and constant pointless conversations, the movie clocks in at a fairly short 82 minutes.)  The screenplay needed at least a couple more rewrites and the two main characters fleshed out a little more so that their Odd Couple relationship had a little more cleverness and creativity to it.

As it is, The Home Teachers is a misstep from HaleStorm that’s fairly tedious and barely even worth a rental.   Might as well just watch The RM again, instead…

Final Grade: C-

Analysis and Other Comments (possible spoilers):

(1) In keeping with the ‘family movie’ tradition, The Home Teachers eschews ‘dirty’ humor but embraces ‘gross’ humor — including jokes about an overflowing toilet (with toilet water landing on a dinner table filled with food) and ‘improper handling’ of a dead body. At least the toilet scene used clean water…

(2) One scene I found a little bothersome that deserves comment: Our heroes (carrying a deer head) get fired upon by two deer hunters who use a shotgun, hunting rifle, and finally an automatic assault rifle who try to gun them down. It will probably pass without comment throughout most of right-wing Utah, but I thought the gunplay was a little excessive for a ‘family’ movie. No one gets hit, of course, (and I’m not a ‘gun control nut’) but does anyone but me think with all the gun violence in the world today, a scene with people getting shot at by someone with an automatic weapon isn’t *inherently* funny, as the film seems to think it is?

(3) There’s a conversation near the end between Nelson and Greg which deserves more discussion.  Nelson admits he missed his child being born because he was on splits with the missionaries.  Greg tells him he doesn’t have to be going ‘full throttle’ in the gospel all the time. This is a good conversation (and could have been expanded upon) because Greg, of course, never seems to go ‘full throttle’ in the gospel — in fact seems to have the parking brake on most of the time. Is Greg right, though? Is it possible to be too aggressive and single-minded in doing the Lord’s work?

A lot of people say they don’t want to be ‘too faithful’ in the gospel, or ‘too righteous’ — but this is usually just an excuse for not being as good as you should be. Strictly speaking, it’s impossible to be ‘too’ righteous or faithful; however, it’s an unfortunate fact, particularly in Utah, that people who are very diligent in the gospel and keep high standards (the “Peter Priesthoods” and “Molly Mormons” as they are called) are frequently looked down upon by the member population at large. Sometimes, the criticism arises from the pride and self-righteousness that often accompanies very principled people, but usually it’s an expression of disdain for people who are doing the things they should be doing and making others feel guilty. (Not wanting to be ‘too righteous’ essentially means you stay away from the big sins, but have a host of small sins that you’d like to keep hold of…)

There’s a difference, though, between being ‘too righteous’ and being too focused on the small things of the gospel that you neglect the big things. A talk I heard sometime ago (which I’ve been unable to locate again for reference…does this ring a bell with anyone?) said our priorities in life should be: (1) God (2) Family (3) Church …with the key being understanding the difference between (1) and (3).  The purpose of the Church is to strengthen the family, not the other way around.

(4) Cameos in this movie include popular LDS songwriter Ruth Hale as an organist and former baseball player Wally Joyner as one of the home teachees.

(5) Greg has a line of dialogue after the two crash their car where he references the crash as when his companion ‘went Thelma and Louise with the car’. The reference, of course, is to the movie “Thelma and Louise” which ends with the title couple also driving their car off a cliff.   Kurt Hale, the screenwriter, appears to be betting that viewers will either have seen the movie, or happen to know how it ends anyway.

Would Nelson have seen the R-rated “Thelma & Louise” at all, though?  It may have been more clever and realistic to have him not understand the reference. (“Velma…what?”)

(6) Viewers who have seen “The Singles Ward” will recognize the picture in the business card for a tow truck company the cop gives Greg and Nelson near the end. It’s the same picture shown during the “Singles Ward” end credits showing one of the Cammie’s female friends and her new husband (the one who talked constantly about how rich and handsome her future husband is going to be…and then married a tow truck driver with a big beard.)