There was a popular movie trope a few decades ago in which young people are passing through a hick town and run afoul of the corrupt local law enforcement. This movie was kind of like that, except instead of a broken tail light or a planted joint, the kids were caught with something much worse: The Book of Mormon. The sets the scene for one of the worst and weirdest movies I've ever seen.
The movie opens as our heroes, two Mormon elders, arrive in a small town that they have been warned "doesn't like outsiders". They hit the streets looking for victims - eh, I mean "converts" - and literally within seconds, the sheriff pulls up and informs them that in this town, you can't preach without a license from the Christian Town Council (CTC). When they propose applying for a license rather than simply leaving town, they are immediately arrested.
This is apparently the biggest crime that has ever happened in this town, because the sheriff hauls them directly into court, interrupting a trial that's already in progress and announces "We got us a couple o' Mormons here". Instead of having the sheriff immediately ejected, the judge clears her docket so she can focus on this grave infraction and the two are quickly put on trial.
Exactly what they're being tried for is kind of vague and nonsensical. They seem to be simultaneously charged with preaching without license, and applying to get such a license. In fact, they are effectively on trial for "not being Christian", and the plaintiffs are ALL the members of the CTC, who represent a bunch of other Christian faiths, which the makers of the film can't actually tell apart.
At this point, we are introduced to the other main characters, the two lawyers in town: THE prosecutor and THE defense attorney. We are given to understand that up until now, they've spent their entire careers engaged in egregious violations of legal ethics, in which the prosecutor dictates terms of plea agreements to the defense attorney, which he accepts without consulting his clients. In this case, however, the judge orders them to try the case.
I trust that everyone with half a brain realizes that if something like this actually happened, the ACLU would descend on the town and crush the CTC like a beer can under a redneck's boot, but the fact is that neither our intrepid elders nor the makers of the film are bothered in the slightest by this jawdroppingly unconstitutional law *per se*; they're just upset that Mormons aren't invited to the party. Indeed, the entire message of the movie seems to be that Mormons are Christian enough to join in persecuting non-Christian faiths. If anyone involved senses the irony, they don't show it.
As I mentioned before, this is the biggest thing that has ever happened in this town, and the result is way more drama than can possibly be believed. I guess the defense lawyer has never defended anyone convicted of an actual crime, because all people in town - including his own wife - are completely disgusted that he's defending two clean cut, extremely polite young men, who are accused of nothing more than sharing their personal mythology.
Now movies often get a lot of things wrong when it comes to the legal system, but they generally get the basics right. For example, they know you don't put two witnesses on the stand at the same time, allow your clients to cross examine witnesses, or a bunch of other bizarre things that happen in this movie. Seriously, it's bananas.
Without giving away any spoilers, they throw in a pretty serious tragedy at one point, and the characters respond with the sort of profound anguish usually reserved for a picnic getting rained out.
The guy playing the defense lawyer is a halfway decent actor, who does his best with a terrible script. All the rest are varying degrees of terrible, particularly the prosecutor, who's badly in need of some basic enunciation exercises.
In the end, there's a certain charm to the naive idiocy of this movie. I imagine the author lives in a small town in Utah - or possibly a bunker - and based the entire story on tales he's heard about lawyers, courts, and religions that aren't Mormonism.
In summary, this one definitely passes the "so bad it's good" test.
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