About a month ago, I finally sat down to watch Singles Ward. Why did it take me so long to see it? Quite frankly, it just looked stupid to me. I guess I'm not what you'd call a member of it's target audience. Much to my delight, I enjoyed Single's Ward. Sure, some of the jokes didn't work, but most of them did. I look at Singles Ward as the LDS version of Animal House. Certainly I'm not suggesting that it was as good as the John Landis classic, but I could definitely see shades of Animal House in there.

The R.M. is an over the top comedy that examines the life of a return missionary. Upon his uneventful homecoming, Jared Phelps arrives at the airport stunned to find that no one is there to pick him up. And that's only the beginning as he soon discovers that much has changed in the two year he was away.

It's obvious that The R.M. is an ode to the works of 80's icon John Hughes for most of the plot bears an uncanny resemblance to Sixteen Candles. Not only does Brother Phelps' family forget his return because of their daughter's wedding plans (there are other reasons as well), but they even have a foreign exchange student living in their house. Granted he's Tongan as opposed to Asian, but it's virtually the same scenario. Yes, there is more to The R.M. but the basic framework is very Sixteen Candles.

The cast is decent. Lead actor Kirby Heyborne does a fine job exhibiting the confusion of his situation, but most of this stuff is just too over the top. Will Swenson (who was hilariously brash in Singles Ward) provides much needed energy as Phelps' life long friend Kori. The rest of the cast just sort of coasts through.

I guess the big problem with The R.M. is in the writing. Kurt Hale wants the movie to be over the top, but there needs to be some kind of a limit. And while The R.M. isn't without funny moments (the informercial bit was a hoot), most of the jokes don't work. Singles Ward had an energy that this movie is sorely lacking. Plus, that picture had a plethora of hilarious cameos. The R.M. has very few.

Even though I'm not LDS, I understood all the "inside" jokes in The R.M. I just didn't find a lot of them very funny. I also got pretty bored with the stereotypes in this picture. Every time Humu (the Tongan exchange student) was on screen, he was stuffing his face with food. Again, you have to set limits. I did appreciate the fact that this movie is just trying to have good clean fun. I also applaud the fact that it isn't a big, preachy church lesson. Still, for a comedy to work, it has to have lots of laughs and there weren't quite enough in this picture for me to recommend it. I can, however, recommend Singles Ward, a movie I expected to hate but ended up enjoying. The R.M., by comparison, doesn't quite get there. This is strange given that The R.M. is certainly going for a broader audience with a bigger, more prominent aspect of the church. Sadly, it didn't work out that way. Sometimes less is more.