THE ACCIDENTAL MISSIONARY – SLIFF Review

Review Dane Marti

The movie’s story: An actor, besotted with fame and booze, gets a metaphoric wake up call, and finds himself stranded in an environment about as far from Tinsel Town as one locale could possibly be!

I needed to watch this film more than once to completely appreciate what it was attempting to accomplish, to figure out exactly what the writer and director were trying to get across to the viewers. I wasn’t sure what I thought about the film at first. While funny and honest, some of the acting seemed a little over the top, some of the writing not quite as humorous as it should have been. Unfortunately, at first I was thinking “Hollywood”,  because some of the film’s style and conceits appear to be out and out Hollywood in tone and look.

However, the theme of the film is satirizing Hollywood product, Hollywood actors and, in particular, the cult of celebrity. The filmmakers are asking us, is this what is important in life? What is of value? How can a person make a difference in the world?

I guess I became, like the Accidental Missionary of the movie, I “saw the light.”
The main character is funny: He’s an actor that had recently had a major brush with fame, celebrity and stardom, perhaps more from acting like a fool than anything else. Again, at first, I thought that the ‘actor’ while good was often overacting a little bit. However, when he finally reaches the location where he will realize that there is more to life than transitory fame, his earlier acting seemed to work better, as if showing the audience what occurs when some people get overnight stardom and cannot handle it. One of the offshoots, of course is obnoxiousness and this character, at first always drunk and abusive, has no time for anyone or the basic human decencies of the world.

Halfway through, I began to enjoy this film and its thematic meaning a lot more than I previously had. As a low-budget, independent film, this was pretty good. Check it out and make your own decisions.

THE ACCIDENTAL MISSIONARY screens a part of the St. Louis International Film Festival on Sunday, Nov 18th at 1:00pm at the Hi-Pointe Theatre