"Saturday's Warrior" — 2½ stars — Kenny Holland, Anna Daines, Monica Moore Smith, Mason D. Davis, Clint Pulver, Morgan Gunter; PG (thematic elements); in general release
"Saturday's Warrior" feels like a time capsule of 1970s LDS popular culture. Its narrative, style and especially its music are evocative of its time. This makes it a great vehicle for nostalgia, especially for fans of the Lex de Azevedo musical on which the film is based, but it also gives the film a dated feel that mutes its impact.
Like the musical, director Michael Buster's film is based around the exploits of a Mormon family living in the early 1970s and presumes a fluency with LDS doctrine on the part of its audience. The movie begins in the pre-existence as the future children of the Flinders family are waiting for their turn to come to mortality.
We meet twins Jimmy (Kenny Holland) and Pam (Anna Daines), the eldest of the siblings, who already share a tight kinship. Their younger sister Julie (Monica Moore Smith) is inseparable from her true love Tod (Mason D. Davis), and the lovebirds fret over whether they will be able to find each other in mortality. Five more kids down the line, the youngest of the Flinders siblings is Emily (Abigail Baugh), who worries whether her parents will still want her once they've had all the other children.
We also meet the ambitious Elder Kestler (Clint Pulver) and his companion Elder Greene (Morgan Gunter), ready to descend upon the earth with a storm of overconfident and slightly misguided missionary enthusiasm. To the Flinders kids and the elders, mortality is an idealized panacea of opportunity that looms with excitement.
Once we fast-forward a few years and swap the pre-existence for 1970s Colorado, we find our characters in markedly different situations. The Flinders children are in a kind of Mormon Partridge Family band, led by their parents Adam (Brian Clark) and Terri (Alison Akin Clark). Pam is in a wheelchair, and Julie is debating whether to stay true to her boyfriend, who is not Tod but is instead Elder Kestler, about to set off for post-Summer of Love San Francisco on his mission.
Tod has grown up outside of the church and is living as a penniless artist in San Francisco, convinced that life has more to offer him. But the primary protagonist is Jimmy, whose righteous riffs are being pulled from the family band into a more worldly rock ’n’ roll outfit called the Warriors.
Right around the time Terri gets pregnant with her eighth child, Jimmy and the Warriors pen a hit single that decries the dangers of overpopulation and the merits of legalized abortion. Jimmy's decision to follow the Warriors out on a West Coast tour and embrace all the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll it promises drives the rest of "Saturday's Warrior's" plot.
Longtime fans of the original will be happy to hear many of the original de Azevedo songs in the new film, as well as a couple of brand-new numbers. For the most part, the film strives to be faithful to its source material, and though "Saturday's Warrior" touches on subject matter that carries weight today, it feels more like a celebration of its own past.
Fans of contemporary LDS pop culture will be happy to see cameos from musicians such as Alex Boye and Jon Schmidt. Audiences should also be sure to listen close to the airport PA system during Elder Kestler's departure scene for another in-joke.
Beneath the camp, "Saturday's Warrior" does offer some sincerity. Elder Kestler's humbling experience in San Francisco and Tod's search for meaning are especially thoughtful threads. And the film does speculate on the interpretation of doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, marking one of the few times, if not the only time, a big screen production has explicitly depicted the relationship between mortality and the pre-existence.
Overall, though, "Saturday's Warrior" flirts with these ideas more than it explores them, and the final product is more nostalgic than moving. But if the goal of "Saturday's Warrior" was simply to bring the LDS musical to the big screen, its mission has been accomplished.
"Saturday's Warrior" is rated PG for thematic elements; running time: 129 minutes.
Joshua Terry is a freelance writer and photojournalist who appears weekly on "The KJZZ Movie Show" and also teaches English composition for Salt Lake Community College. Find him online at facebook.com/joshterryreviews.