Trek: The Movie Review

Actual footage from my personal Pioneer Trek in 2004. Not footage from this movie

Pioneer Trek. It's a Mormon thing. That's the tagline of this movie, which is about the only thing the movie gets right when it comes to Trek. This is a by Mormons, for Mormons movie, as the filmmakers themselves have admitted, so I don't expect anyone who is a non-Mormon to even look at this review. Unless of course you thought by the title that this was some sort of Star Trek review. I mean, when I search this movie on Google or IMDb, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is at the top of the list of things the internet thinks I'm searching for for. As fun as it would be to do a review of that movie, it's Pioneer Trek we're looking at here, not Star Trek. If you happen to be a non-Mormon and you are wondering what in the heck Pioneer Trek is, let me give a brief summary. In the early days of the Mormon church, which was organized in 1830, there was a lot of persecution. The early saints were driven from their homes on numerous occasions, causing them to cross the plains on foot, traveling from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and eventually to Utah over the course of about 15-20 years. A popular tradition today for Mormon youth is to do short reenactments of that where we dress up like pioneers and walk with handcarts for a few days. Pioneer Trek.

When I say brief summary, that's the extremely brief summary. Obviously the history of the Mormon church is a very long, complex history that I don't care to detail in this review, but the general idea is that they traveled west, often walking with handcarts carrying their stuff. I think in general it's a good idea to remember and honor your ancestors, regardless of what your current state of life is, so in the Mormon church, Pioneer Trek is one good way to remember the sacrifices that our ancestors made. Believe me, hiking in the mountains pulling a handcart behind you for just four days is tough work, even when your church leaders have everything meticulously planned out with plenty of food and water as well as ready medical attention if anyone needs it. You get to the end of that four days and you're ready to go back to your own house with your own family and live your normal life. But generally it's a very positive experience that makes you appreciate your ancestors who went through what they did over the course of several months or years. It was just a four-day reenactment for me. But for them it was life. If they ran out of food and water or got sick, there wasn't always a truck driving behind them ready to bail them out. They had to do their best and move forward.

I promise I'll get to this movie in a second, but the idea of this movie coming out sparked an interest in myself to go back and reflect on my personal experience with Pioneer Trek. The Trek that I went on with my stake was from June 29 - July 2 in 2004. I was 15 years old at the time. Don't be too impressed that I remembered those dates. All that means is that I saved my journal from that experience. I went back and read my thoughts at the time and watched the 55 minute DVD that they made of it, where someone took video footage of our Trek and added interviews of my peers talking about their experiences. I found it to be a really great experience to go back and read my thoughts and watch that DVD. I haven't done that in a long time, so doing so after so many years was pretty special. In fact, the pictures in this blog post are not of this movie that I'm reviewing. I took screenshots from my computer of said Trek DVD while I was watching, because I thought it would be fun to add those to this review. For me, this was a life-changing experience that I never forgot. Being only 15 years old at the time, it was a great way to shape my testimony. I especially loved listening to the testimonies of all my old friends from 14 years ago after this experience.

Actual footage from my Pioneer Trek. This is 15-year-old me

For sparking this desire to go back and reflect on my personal experiences, I really appreciate this movie. It also gives me a platform to talk about a personal experience that I had 14 years ago that I've not talked about much since. But if I'm being perfectly honest, a part of the reason why I immediately went back and watched my own Trek video and read my journal was to purge from my mind this awful movie that I had wasted $5 on. Normally I don't have a problem writing bad reviews, but in this instance I feel horrible doing so because these guys followed me on Twitter. I don't think it's because I'm a fancy movie person. I think it was because I was tweeting during General Conference and whoever was managing their Twitter page went about following people who were tweeting about Conference, which is a smart move on their part. Thus when they followed me, I tweeted to them that I was going to give this movie a shot and write a review of it. And they liked that tweet. So I decided to be a man of my word and fulfill my promise. Which means those people who made this movie could very well be reading this review right now. It's one thing to write a bad review that only your friends will read. But when the filmmakers themselves could be reading? Yikes. That is a bit intimidating to me.

All I can say if the filmmakers are reading this review is that I hope they appreciate honest feedback. I do keep in mind when it comes to locally made films that they're at an unfair disadvantage without the resources available to a normal big-budget Hollywood production. They often can't afford to hire major Hollywood actors or a professional Hollywood movie crew to make it look like a perfect Hollywood film, so it's unfair to judge in the same level. Even if said local filmmakers are rich and can afford to finance the whole thing, you can't spend $50 million making the movie because you're not going to make that much money in return. On the high on the things, "Meet the Mormons" made $6 million, while "The Saratov Approach" made $2.1 million and "Once I Was a Beehive" made $732,655. And those are movies that all had huge, positive buzz in the Mormon community. At the same time, though, all three of those movies were also made with the same handicaps as "Trek: The Movie" had. Or at least those last two were. "Meet the Mormons" is in a slightly different category with the Church itself making and financing it. But despite extremely low budgets, "The Saratov Approach" and "Once I Was a Beehive" were two quality films.

I think one of the biggest problems for "Trek: The Movie" was the idea itself. As you can tell, I loved my Trek experience. As do millions of other Mormon youth. But without even seeing any footage, how many of you would be intrigued at the idea of a Trek movie? I know I was concerned. That doesn't seem like a topic that translates well into an interesting big screen experience. I mean, most of Trek constitutes hours of walking while casually talking with your fellow handcart peers about life. How do you take that and transfer it into a traditional three-act movie structure that manages to keep the attention of the audience for an hour and half? I think the idea the filmmakers had was to take the idea and turn it into a Mormon version of a John Hughes-style high school drama. I suppose that sounds like an interesting idea in theory. But again. How do you translate that idea into an actual movie script that works? The correct answer is that you go talk to the people who put together "Once I Was a Beehive" and figure out how they did it. Because they talked the subject of Girl's Camp and somehow magically transformed that into an amazing Mormon film. In fact, that movie is one of the reasons why I had the confidence to purchase a ticket to this movie. Maybe it can work again?

Actual footage from my Pioneer Trek. I'm not in this picture

I suppose it could work with the right team in place. If you have an experienced Mormon filmmaker like T.C. Christensen who knows just the right strings to pull when it comes to pleasing his target audience, you could've made this work. But the director of this movie is a man by the name of Alan Peterson whose previous IMDb credits are highlighted by two extreme political documentaries called "Hillary: The Movie" and "Hype: The Obama Effect," both from 2008. So, political propaganda films to a Mormon teen movie? That's quite the transition. Not quite the experience I look for with films like this. And the screenplay was written by David Howard, the guy who wrote "Galaxy Quest"? Well that's an idea. Apparently he's done nothing since "Galaxy Quest," though, in terms of writing screenplays. And the other credited writer is a man by the name of Jongiorgi Enos, who acted in a few Mormon movies, such as "Brigham City" and "The Testaments," but this apparently is his first time writing a major screenplay. Now if this writing and directing team with no prior experience in this genre actually works out, then props to them. But when the entire screenplay is an outright disaster and the direction is awful, you look back at that and suddenly it all makes sense. They could've used a different writing crew on this one.

Now I don't know if any of the actors in this movie are going to find this review or even really care about the opinions of a random movie blogger. But they're the ones I'm actually going to compliment. Austin R. Grant, Joel Bishop, Stefania Barr, Clint Pulver, Ryan Mitchel Brown, Spencer Loftus, Avery Pizzuto and Spencer Marsh are the major players in this and they all did a fine job with what they were given. But it's that last part that's the problem. What they were given to work with. This is an awful representation of Trek from start to finish. It's so bad, that it's hard to come up with specific examples as to why, but I suppose we'll start at the top. This is supposed to be a Pioneer Trek for this whole stake. I know not all stakes are the same, but I imagine that if stake leadership made the decision to do a stake Pioneer Trek, there's going to be a lot of planning and preparation put into said Trek for months in advance. And if you have 100+ kids going, you're going to have more than five adult leaders going with them. And all the leaders are going to be well prepared as to what they are doing. Here we have the main leader who is written as an oblivious man to all of this, as if he was asked to lead a few days before, and the other leaders are exaggerated to the extreme.

So said leaders are taking this large group of kids up the mountains five minutes to a place where it looked like all the kids could walk home if they wanted to. Their handcarts are practically empty. And they aren't fed anything. Like, seriously. They walk for half the day and when it's time for lunch, they get a single orange. Then we have one of the drill sergeant leaders yelling at them every five minutes. This isn't Trek. Just look at the pictures I've provided of my real Trek. That's what Trek is. This Trek is just a joke. I don't know the personal backgrounds of these filmmakers who wrote this, but it looked like they had no idea what actual Pioneer Trek was like. At least I hope that's the case. If they ever volunteered as leaders on a real Pioneer Trek carefully organized for months in advance by stake leaders who wanted nothing more than to give the youth in the stake a life-changing experience, then that's even more embarrassing because at the very least this movie should've been able to capture what Pioneer Trek was actually like. I mean, maybe I just went on the most celestial Pioneer Trek ever, but I'd be willing to bet that anyone who loved Trek will watch this movie and be confused as to how off this is. It's the type of movie that could be watched for the sake of laughing at it for the wrong reasons, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.

Actual Footage of my Pioneer Trek. I'm at the back right

Then we have the curious case of the youth involved. Now again, I think the actors themselves did a good job at what they were given, even though most of them looked like they were at least in their mid-20's as if this were a college Singles Ward going on Trek instead of youth aged 12 to 18. But how they were written was embarrassing. Granted, I can't say everyone involved in going to Trek with me back in 2004 were jumping for joy, but I think for the most part we all had a good attitude about it. All of these kids, and I mean all of them, were written as snobby, annoying teenagers who were dreading this experience. We had a long sequences of the exaggerated, mean adults lining them up to check to see if they snuck stuff in that they weren't supposed to, and all of them had candy, food and electronic devices hidden everywhere and were completely brokenhearted that they had to give them up. And nearly all of them continued to be extremely annoying throughout the whole movie. I think the only "normal" teenager portrayed in the movie was the girl who was playing the non-member. The rest of them were written as a exaggerated Mormon teenagers who drove me crazy, with little realism and way too many romantic subplots.

So yeah, when the whole setup is bad, that's a problem. This is supposed to be a good movie about Pioneer Trek, but the leaders were incompetent, the setup of the Trek itself was way off in terms of accuracy and all of the teenagers that are leading the way in this movie are written as exaggerated Mormon teenagers who all hate the idea of this Pioneer Trek. But OK. Fine. Maybe this is just a really poor setup. Maybe I'll get used to the characters and get something out of this movie in the final two acts. Well, they tried. The major storyline involved our main kid who was lacking in faith because one of his friends died a year previously. There was potential there. But even that fell flat. And the final act of the movie involves them getting lost in the woods because one of the girls got sick since these incompetent leaders decided to starve everyone, so the only normal leader had to drive her home in the truck, while leaving our rebellious main kid in charge of everything. Logically that had me screaming inside, dramatically it all fell flat, spiritually it felt artificial instead tear-jerking, and comedically it was just cringe-worthy. I tried to be patient with this movie, but it was bad to begin with and just kept spiraling downward to the point where I wanted to walk out.

After I left the theater, I didn't want to write this review. I didn't get the impression that many people had even heard about it and I certainly wasn't hearing any buzz after it's first week in theaters. I think this is a Mormon movie that will disappear from theaters rather quickly, so I was thinking that I could get away with just keeping my miserable experience to myself and no one would know any different. But there's a few reasons why I decided to write this. First, I said I would on Twitter after this movie's Twitter page followed me. Second, I honestly had a great time looking back and remembering my personal Trek and I'm glad I had a platform to discuss that for a bit before diving into the actual review, which is why this post is longer than my normal reviews. Third, if any of my other Utah friends saw these previews and were curious about this movie, I'm here to rescue you. Don't waste your time and money on this movie. There's plenty of other good Mormon films that you can watch, with "The Saratov Approach" and "Once I Was a Beehive" being my two prime examples. Yeah, I know, it's an uphill battle making this low-budgeted Mormon films, but for every one of them that succeeds, there's movies like this that don't make it. My grade for the movie is a 3/10.