The Best Two Years: Going Dutch

The Best Two Years

By Jeannette Catsoulis

The Salt Lake City indie mill continues to spit out promotional ads for the Mormon faith disguised as movies. (Or perhaps they're just trying to give decent folks a reason to run the gauntlet of sin that lies between them and their nearest multiplex.) In the case of The Best Two Years, adapted from director Scott S. Anderson's play, The Best Two Years of My Life, the disguise is no more convincing than recent genre efforts The Singles Ward and The R.M.

The thinly written plot involves four missionaries--known as "elders," for the LDS-challenged among you--sharing an apartment in Holland. Elders Van Pelt and Johnson (Cameron Hopkin and David Nibley) deal with the lack of feminine company by engaging in cute badinage and frequent bouts of wrestling. Elder Rogers (K.C. Clyde), the only cast member with an acting pedigree (if you call Firestarter 2 a pedigree), has lost his zeal for proselytizing ever since another elder stole his girl back home. (Anxiety over left-behind sweethearts seems to be a huge issue for the missionaries, perhaps because the Mormon female's Prime Directive seems to be to pair off and procreate before the senility of one's 20s sets in.)

The arrival of a new elder, a bespectacled nerd called Calhoun (Kirby Heyborne, who has clearly watched too many Jerry Lewis movies), sparks a return to faith for Elder Rogers, a climactic baptism, and an opportunity for the film to spend 15 minutes on the wonder of cult founder Joseph Smith. The Best Two Years is no more than an inspirational video for missionaries-in-training, the kind of movie where a prayed-for phone call arrives trailing the "Hallelujah Chorus" and a Mormon with Catholic parents is considered an edgily written character. "There's something missing here!" screams a character at one point. That would be talent.