Passage to Zarahemla — Would’ve Been Better If We Could Have Seen Zarahemla

(This is a guest post by Dick, who also blogs under the name Tom Johnson. I was hesitant to review this movie, but Dick was eager to see it, so he agreed to write it in exchange for a free copy. Let me just add that Passage to Zarahemla was much better than the last Summer Naomi movie I (partly) saw, but not as good as The Best Two Years, which is a movie I would recommend to non-LDS people). My cousin Heather also reviewed Passage to Zarahemla (with a comment by the director; aren’t we connected?).)

Passage to Zarahemla, a new movie in the Mormon genre directed by Chris Heimerdinger, author of Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, has a plot with an intriguing idea. Placing a modern person back in Nephite (50 BC) times reminds me of movies like Back to the Future and other time-travel epics.

But unfortunately the movie falls short of ever delivering on this intrigue because we never see Zarahemla at all. All you see is literally the “passage to” Zaramhemla. The passage is a spot in the woods in Leeds, Utah, where a lone Nephite guards a path he thinks Lamanites will use to invade Zarahemla.

Much of the anticipation of the protagonist stumbling into an ancient city, into Nephite homes and other Zarahemla environs, is never realized.

That said, the movie has its moments. We see the slow conversion of the main protagonist from a situation of unbelief to someone whose heart is softened. We see a Nephite literally speaking from the dust. The sci-fi portal, where characters pass from one world to another, always gets my attention.

But overall, it’s definitely a B movie produced with a low budget. The Nephite and Lamanite costumes look like they’re borrowed from a Manti pageant (as one character in the movie even suggests). The female protagonist wears frumpy Eighties clothing that are anything but California cool. I can live with these shortcomings, but the caricatures of the Nephites and Lamanites are tiring.

(I think Dick is not the authority on female fashion that he would like to think he is. Probably her clothing is the latest thing, only, we are not up on that).

Is it possible for a Mormon movie to portray a Nephite with real depth of character? The Lamanites are just one notch above barbaric cannibals. Each party is fixed in a single, predictable mindset.

Overall, despite so-so dialogue and feeling cheated of a glimpse of the filmmakers’ vision of Zarahemla, the movie kept my attention on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

(I would also point out that the gleeful use of violence while shrinking from even the mildest of epithets made the characterization highly problematic. As if it’s fine that gang members like to shoot people but would never befoul their mouths with a profanity. Not that I want to hear swearing, mind you, necessarily, just that such an imposed cinematic value system is odd and contrived.)

(I know, sorry, this was Dick’s review. But I had thoughts. And then I had to share them.)