Barbara VanDenburgh

The Republic | azcentral.com

Critic%27s review%3A 2 stars

Documentary is as glossy as a sales brochure.

Would you go out of your way to see an infomercial that was more than an hour long? Would you even pay for the privilege? That's what "Meet the Mormons" would have filmgoers do.

It opens with a bright, sunshiny woman asking a broad cross section of people on the street in Times Square what they think of when they think of Mormons, and the responses reveal a striking lack of knowledge about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: that they're racists, that they have multiple wives, that they don't celebrate holidays.

Cut through those interviews are clips from films and television shows, like "Burn After Reading," "South Park" and "The Simpsons," to illustrate from whence those misconceptions might stem. "Meet the Mormons" proposes to take the viewer straight to the source, actual Mormon households, in a series of six mini documentaries.

Except what follows is no less scripted nor more sincere than the media portrayals pilloried. The film is as glossy as an informational brochure, heavily edited and neatly packaged to let you know that "Mormons come in all sizes, shapes and colors."

To drive that point home, "Meet the Mormons" introduces viewers to six Mormon families: an African-American family in Atlanta; the coach of the United States Naval Academy football team in Maryland; a Costa Rican family into martial arts; a 92-year-old pilot who lives in Arizona; an engineer from Nepal; and a Salt Lake City family whose eldest son is headed off on a mission.

And some of the stories would, if explored in depth, be compelling. Col. Gail Halvorsen, a 92-year-old pilot who lives with his wife in Arizona, dropped candy from his plane to impoverished German children during the Berlin airlift. That would make a documentary worth seeing.

Or there's Dawn Armstrong, the proud mother of a teenage son about to leave on a mission to South Africa. She has a stable home, a loving husband, a cadre of well cared for children — an unlikely scenario, given that she found herself a single mother with no support system at 16.

But the good stuff — the conflict, the stuff that makes stories interesting — gets shunted aside. Real Mormon families, just like families of every other faith, have flaws, trials and hardships to overcome. Not here, where you just find perfect lives that are pillars of their respective communities.

You'd learn a lot more if you went out and, well, actually met a Mormon. ​

'Meet the Mormons'

Director: Blair Treu.

Rating: PG for some thematic elements.

Reach the reporter at barbara.vandenburgh@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/BabsVan.