This movie is like a live-action Chick tract -- only not as entertaining.

So tonight I was feeling sickish and bored so I watched The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry because I have a soft spot for Gavin MacLeod and Robert Guillaume. I didn't realize going into it that it was one of "those" films.

I swear, these Christian conversion movies really ought to come with a warning or at least their own MPC rating code ("Rated: IM for insulting and moronic"). The cemetery scene where Gavin MacLeod has the boys put their ears to the tombstones and then whispers to them, "Why? Why didn't anyone tell me about Jesus?" is particularly foul. Still, it's like an Ed Wood film. It was so jaw-droppingly bad that I couldn't look away.

Basically the story tells how Capt. Stubing converts an entire town full of kids using nothing more than a boat load of lemonade, chocolate cake, a little pizza and an extended montage sequence. Wait... what!? The film's location isn't specified, but it's very clearly small-town upstate New York (the movie was partially filmed in Waterloo, NY). Believe me. I grew up in this region of NYS. The entire town was already Christian; even the ones who don't attend church. Maybe, just maybe there was one Jewish family and perhaps a Jehova's Witness or two. So where are all these kids coming from who need converting? I guess maybe they weren't "true" Christians.

The story centers on three very white kids in this small town in 1970 who befriend an old man (Gavin MacLeod). Capt. Stubing introduces them to the wonders of Christ through such inane examples as the creepy graveyard scene previously mentioned and promising them chocolate cake if they find his "secret place". The film tries to sell itself as a coming-of-age story, focusing on the one kid's affection for the girl who works in the local diner but I don't think it's fifteen minutes before Jesus escapes Capt. Stubing's lips. Along the way this same kid overcomes the town bully through the power of Christ and wins the heart and soul of the town's token black man and nonbeliever (Robert Guillaume) by mowing his lawn for free. Bonus cheek turning: Robert Guillaume killed the kid's father in a drunk driving accident.

The kid never does ask the girl out. Instead he writes her a note that tells her all about how he's found Jesus and he hopes she'll start reading the Bible too. If she doesn't have a Bible then he'll buy her one out of the earnings from his spiritual lawn mowing extortion racket. Naturally, she's so moved by his note hooking her up with G-Daddy, that she converts too.

The flick is rife with wonderfully awful lines too like, "I always keep an extra copy of the Bible in case of emergencies like this," and "You know... When I was young, we never had a place like this. We used to just walk downtown and stand on the corner."

In the end, the one kid becomes a biology teacher at a Christian college and outspoken proponent of Young Earth Creationism, the second kid grows up to own, not one, but three Christian radio stations and the third kid becomes a church pastor. The town bully becomes a police officer after his conversion to Christianity. They all meet once a year to stand around Capt. Stubing's grave sharing a refreshing glass of lemonade.

So if you're looking for an incredibly obnoxious Christian movie, or feel the need to have over-the-hill hack actors give outrageously bad reasons to believe in God involving chocolate cake then this is your movie. And I have to admit, the film is so over-the-top in its sincerity that it ends up being quite funny, if unintentionally so. Also, the period detail in the sets is really top notch although apparently not a single person in this town smoked. If you visited any real small-town upstate NY diner in 1970 you would be choking on cigarette smoke.

the bully becoming a cop is true to life...


I love how fundies always think that if you're not a fundie, it's only because you've never once in your entire life heard of jesus. Because if there's one thing that's easy to avoid in our culture, its jesus

...is right after Capt. Stubing's graveyard ventriloquist act he tells the boys how lucky they are because they have Bibles. After all, all those poor yellow and brown kids who never heard of Jesus are going straight to hell and will burn forever. I kid you not! He actually tells them that anybody who isn't so lucky as to have heard of Jesus and accepted him into their heart is going to burn.

He also tells the town bully that the reason his father isn't around any longer is because his mother ran him off because she couldn't accept the fact that he had been filled with Jesus' love. Wow!

Also be on the lookout for these MMMS (Mormon Message Movies)...

Saints and Soldiers - "But...but...but...it's not a Mormon movie! It's about World War II!" Yeah, with a BIG slice of Mormon proselytizing crammed in.

The Other Side of Heaven - at least this stinker is unintentionally hilarious. A young Mormon Elder (that's their oxymoron, not mine) goes off to convert the simple, ignorant folks of Tonga.

I sat there with my jaw dropping, muttering: "Couldn't these asshats see how insulting and degrading this is to the native people?"

Guess not, because in one scene, a Tonga Mom begs the Great White Foreign God-Friend Man to make boom-boom with her young daughter.

How in the world did Anne Hathaway get roped into this mess? Oh, she's the one who also got taken in by an Italian con man with "connections in the Vatican." (Another story - watch for the "American Greed" episode.)

And the critics raved, over at Rotten Tomatoes:

To call The Other Side of Heaven "appalling" would be to underestimate just how dangerous entertainments like it can be.

Captures a breathtaking exotic landscape cluttered only by the smugness of its characters.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is a Mormon family movie, and a sappy, preachy one at that.