The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith Review

Today we veer away from the mainstream market to dive into the local Utah market with "The Other Side of Heaven 2," which comes just over 17 years after the original film, which had its initial release in December 2001. This is a movie that has been advertised here locally for a long time. I don't know the exact date, but I feel that the initial word got out early last year. I want to say that there was something about it during the commercials of April 2018 General Conference, but I could be wrong there. All I can figure out for sure is that the initial teaser was released in October 2018 while Wikipedia claims it was announced in February 2018. Either way, they got the word out early for this sequel and we've had posters hanging in my local theater for several months at least. And it's finally here! Now when it was first announced, most of the social media reaction was very ecstatic. I, on the other hand, was like, "Wait... what?" I wasn't quite sure what the purpose of a sequel to "The Other Side of Heaven" was, especially one coming out this long after the original movie. This is often the type of belated sequel that doesn't work out so well, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and let people be excited instead of stirring up controversy. I figured I'd just wait and see.

The history behind "The Other Side of Heaven" is an interesting one. It tells the story of Elder John H. Groberg, who is a fairly popularly figure in Latter-day Saint circles. He served in the First Quorum of the Seventy from 1976 to 2005 before being given emeritus status by President Hinckley in October 2005. In that time, he spoke a lot about his experiences as a missionary in Tonga and even wrote a book about it titled "In the Eye of the Storm." Deseret Book was initially hesitant to sell the rights to that book for a movie because they were nervous about how the Church would be portrayed in the movie, which was not made or endorsed by the Church. But they eventually did because the idea that the film's main producer, as well as other crew members, were members. That book became "The Other Side of Heaven," was was theatrically distributed by Excel Entertainment Group, who has produced films like "God's Army," "Saints and Soldiers," "The Work and the Glory," "17 Miracles," "Meet the Mormons" and other Church-themed films. Walt Disney took care of the DVD release, which is why you see their logo on the DVD cover if you own it. So yeah, "The Other Side of Heaven" is a Disney film, which is kinda funny. I often forget about that.

As far as my opinion on "The Other Side of Heaven," despite it being hugely popular among Latter-day Saints, it's not really a movie I've gravitated towards. I love Elder Groberg's story, but it has more of an impact when listening to him speak about it and relating that to the gospel. In movie form it feels very episodic, which is not always a narrative I gravitate towards. There's not really a strong beginning, middle and end. It's just a string of Elder Groberg's missionary experiences attached together. Sure, the individual parts are moving and rather intense at times, but the movie as a whole feels a tad bit disconnected. And in hindsight I find it rather amusing seeing Anne Hathaway playing a good Latter-day Saint girl given that she plays the girlfriend of Elder Groberg. At the time that certainly made sense. She was an unknown actress when she was cast and the movie came out four months after fellow Disney film "The Princess Diaries," which was her huge breakout role. She did a fine job. It's just kinda funny seeing her in that role. Overall, I still enjoy "The Other Side of Heaven." It's perfectly fine. And I like it way more than critics did as it has a 29 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. But it's still not one that jumps out to me as a favorite faith-based film.

In regards to this sequel, Disney is playing no part in this movie's release. That fact had me a bit nervous at first. Usually the biggest trouble you get with belated sequels is when a smaller production company is doing a sequel to a bigger studio film. But a closer investigation revealed that Mitch Davis, the original director of "The Other Side of Heaven," has returned to direct the sequel. Also returning for this film is Christopher Gorham, the actor who played Elder Groberg. So there's continuity there. Obviously Anne Hathaway isn't returning. In the 17 years between films, she became an Academy Award winning actress. Thus whether or not she wanted to return was probably not even the question here. I imagine they would've killed their whole budget in doing so because she's too expensive for a local film like this. But her replacement, a lady by the name of Natalie Medlock, does a great job. And replacing Disney is BYUtv. Actually, Box Office Mojo claims that ArtAffects is the distributor here, but BYUtv is the first logo you see when the opening credits role. All the other production companies come after. So I like to say that they replaced Disney with BYU. That's a valid replacement, right? Although maybe we should give director Mitch Davis the real credit.

Now onto the movie itself. The other question I had initially was what story is there left to tell. I was well aware of Elder Groberg's story as a missionary in Tonga, but I wasn't aware of stories that happened later in his life. Although I alleviated my own concerns when I did some quick research and learned that Elder Groberg went back to Tonga about 10 years later with his wife and kids to serve as the mission president of that mission. That's probably the story they're going for here. As it turns out, that's the exact story. The story is taken from the book "The Fire of Faith," which Elder Groberg published in 1996, two years after his initial book "In the Eye of the Story." In reading over the description of "The Fire of Faith" on Amazon, there's a lot more stories he tells about his experiences as a mission president and beyond, but "The Other Side of Heaven 2" takes certain selections from that book in order to make their movie. Suddenly everything makes sense and I can finally be content with the idea of a second movie. In fact, the gap between movies is perfect given that Christopher Gorham is returning to play Elder Groberg. No need to use makeup to have him look older or recast, like they would've had to do if they made this a few years after the first one.

Even though I alleviated my concerns with all of this quick research, I was still curious as to what they were going to do with this movie in order to make a movie about a mission president interesting. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that a mission president does on a day-to-day basis that doesn't necessarily lend itself as well to a movie when compared to the stories of a missionary. For those reasons, Elder Groberg's part in this movie isn't the most interesting one. Sure, there's a sequence with his family traveling on a boat in a storm that gets rather intense. It was a nice reunion when he returned to his original island for five minutes of the movie. When his wife gets pregnant and has a son, there's some interesting drama there when the son gets sick and there's not enough medical attention on the island. There's stories like that and others with Elder Groberg. All of his kids are also adorable. I love the family interactions. All the actors, both Christopher Gorham and Natalie Medlock, as well as their kids, do a great job. Having a young Thomas S. Monson as the presiding apostle over Elder Groberg was fun and Russell Dixon seemed like he enjoyed portrayed President Monson. But if I'm being honest, there's just not as much here to make this as interesting.

However, making up for the lack of material in regards to Elder Groberg's mission president experience is an excellent story about a Tongan family on one of the islands. This is where I really want to list off character names and give credit to the actors who portrayed them, but I'm presented with the unfortunate conundrum that this is a small enough film that IMDb doesn't have the full cast listing updated, nor is there a separate Wikipedia page for this film. Maybe said information will be updated later, but this is the opening day of this release that I'm typing this. Combined with that, my dumb American brain has a tough time remembering Polynesian names well enough to spell them off the top of my head, nor am I good at remembering new actors' names after only seeing their name once in the credits, so I'm not going to try to embarrass myself. But nevertheless there's a story arc with a father who is a preacher wherein one of his sons wants to join the Church. He does so against his father's wishes and the father then disowns him. Said son then ends up as a missionary under Elder Groberg. Intertwined along the way is a rather gripping and emotional story between father and son as well as father and Elder Groberg that carried the emotional weight in the film with some powerful themes.

Beware that this movie is PG-13. And for good reason. I went into the early bird matinee showing expecting to be the only one in the theater, but was surprised to find the theater mostly full. In the theater were a lot of parents taking their kids to see this. I'm not exactly sure how those specific kids reacted to the movie, but I don't really recommend this is a film for the whole family. I don't want to spoil exactly what happens in certain scenes, but it gets very intense. The original film is only rated PG and I'd say that's a pretty heavy PG. Thus I was thinking that this would be more of a light PG-13, but it's a pretty deserving PG-13. No language or any of that. It's an acceptable Christian film. But the island can be unforgiving at times and the ocean is a monster. There's also some human beings that aren't very nice or accepting towards the missionaries and other members of the Church. The movie isn't full of brutal sequences like that, but when they do happen, the movie doesn't really hold back. It's effective in adding the emotional depth to the movie, but keep your small kids away from this. My recommendation is to make this a date night film. After seeing that, if you think your kids are tough enough to handle it, buy the DVD later. It'll be at Deseret Book before too long.

The final thing that I'll say here is that when I was reading over the negative reviews from critics about the first film, the biggest theme there was that they didn't like that film because it was religious propaganda. Maybe they were expecting something different because Disney was a part of that film's production, but I facepalmed hard at that. Duh! This is a faith-based film about a missionary. If you're not a Latter-day Saint or you're not religious at all, why are you seeing "The Other Side of Heaven" or "The Other Side of Heaven 2"? Neither one are the movie that will push you over the edge and have you calling the missionaries to get baptized. For better or for worse, this is a movie directed specifically at a Latter-day Saint audience and people from that audience who loved the first movie are going to love this sequel. If you're not religious, this isn't for you. But if you are, then see this when you get the chance. I'm not saying you have to run out and see this in theaters, but it's a solid option as a worthy sequel. Perhaps I'm a bit harsh on the narrative structure of both movies and I'm more harsh on the fact that Elder Groberg's story in this sequel isn't as interesting, but I still walked out with an overall positive feeling, thus I will give "The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith" a 7/10.