I'm a fan of this Oscar-winning director's offbeat films, and this one is just plain weird. It's a bizarre combination of sex, kidnapping, Mormonism, cloning, tabloid sensationalism and more. It's impossible to describe. You just have to see it to appreciate it fully. Joyce McKinney is infatuated with a Mormon, and she believes he has been kidnapped by Mormons to "return him to the true path" after he had a three-day fling with Joyce, who herself had sort of kidnapped him first.
There are conflicting stories about what actually happened, and whether it was even a crime. Errol Morris interviews various parties in this strange tale, but never gets to interview the key Mormon in question, who refused to participate in the film. Joyce seems like a sweet, incurable romantic who just has poor judgment and an odd way of going about things. Ultimately, despite her flaws, she is really a rather likable, sympathetic person--although clearly quirky and somewhat mixed up.
This film is more in the vein of his earlier "Gates of Heaven," about an odd family that runs a pet cemetery and lives around various other odd folks. It's not up to the quality of his Oscar-winning film "The Thin Blue Line," that helped get a wrongfully convicted man out of prison. (If you can, you owe it to yourself to see that one.) But I found it an amusing way to spend roughly an hour and a half.
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