It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

A review here compares this movie to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Being a Greek Mormon myself, I concur to a certain degree. The performances were good, Kirby Heyborne's facial expressions and reactions really carry the movie, Will Swenson more or less reprises his role from Single's Ward and Britani Bateman perfectly balances Mormon moral principles, in every sense, and being plain hot. The first half of the movie more than anything I felt sorry for the poor guy, although there were some good laughs, too. Most of the humor though is based on Mormon stereotypes - if You are not acquainted with that, I am afraid You will not get much out of this flick. I think that there is a message for Mormons, that righteousness always pays off, even it does not look like this at all, in the end you will ride with the hot general authorities daughter towards sunset; the message for non-Mormons IMHO is, "Mormons are an odd people, but they can laugh at themselves"

I have lived in Utah for 12 years, and like another reviewer, I had seen part of this on a local TV station a couple of weeks ago, and thought what I saw was pretty funny, so I rented the DVD. The first half of the movie is hilarious! Nothing goes right for the main character after he returns from his mission to Wyoming (a big laugh right there...). My daughters and I laughed our heads off. Toward the end of the movie, the momentum was somewhat lost by the convoluted story. The movie tried to turn serious, and it came off as a bit preachy. It was a bit heavy handed toward "jack" Mormons and toward non-Mormons, as they are depicted as heavy drinkers and just all around bad people. It wasn't a bad movie, however, and we got some good laughs out of it. "Big Budah" the local radio personality did surprisingly well in his acting debut! The DVD has a lot of fun extras too. All in all, I recommend it for good family viewing and a few laughs.

My sister left the DVD for The RM after Thanksgiving this year with her recommendation. We'd never heard of the movie before this Nov [2004] but were willing to give it a try. Looking over the DVD cover gave me a fair sense that the movie would likely be wholesome enough for our entire family, which is always a plus here. [Really that stuff does matter to a lot of people.] That was refreshing all by itself.Both of us, our six children, and two of our friends [in their 50s] just finished watching The RM this evening, for the second time. We're all still grinning and humming the music. None of us are LDS or ever have been, but we got most of the jokes. From our perspective The RM seemed to offer plenty of gentle tweeks without becoming offensive or disdainful. For any LDS wondering, we did not think it portrayed LDSs in poor light at all - rather it appears that there are some with an excellent sense of humor in your midst. I don't know how many films already exist in this genre, but we're very impressed with our first exposure to HaleStorm Entertainment. We found the acting and comedic timing quite good. The storyline was refreshing, the wit was sharp, and the music was great! [We've already looked up Sweethaven and played the bonus video several times.] Considering the subject matter [and the movie never having crossed our radar previously] we were expecting a low-budget, home-movie type deal and found ourselves surprised and impressed with the production quality. And while the moral may be simple, the importance of choosing to do the right thing is a universal principal that plenty of non-Mormons can appreciate too.I doubt we would have ever run across this movie accidentally on our own, but we consider it a gem. Accordingly, we're going to see if our local [artsy] theater will consider bringing The RM to their big screen so it can be enjoyed by others as well. Our collective opinion is that this movie deserves a broader audience.

Before you read this review, go to my name and read my review for "The Singles Ward". That will give you the idea about how I feel about these types of movies. I'm very skeptical going in, and come out pleasantly surprised.I have to admit, I like 'The R.M.' more than I liked 'Singles Ward'. Maybe it's because I only went to a singles ward twice, and then decided that I'd rather chew glass than marry one of the obviously desperate ladies there. (I knew they were desperate because they actually wanted to date a dork like ME.)I am, however, an R.M. (Chile Santiago South 1991-1993) and thought that most of the jokes were extremely funny. Yes, some were over the top, but as a whole, I loved it.***MINOR SPOILERS*** My favorite part was the comparisons of Elder's quorum and Relief Society. I almost blew lemonade out of my nose I was laughing so hard.***END SPOILERS***I also thought that 'The R.M.' had less cheesy LDS-related jokes. Not saying that there weren't any, but fortunately they spared us any green Jello jokes this time around.If you are a returned missionary, go see this movie. You will definitely see something that seems familiar.Plus, it's fun to just see a movie that's a lot of fun.