This is a movie based on the life of a Mormon missionary to the Tongan islands. As such the scenery is *beautiful* regardless of wherever it was they actually filmed it at. LOL, one of the curiosities of the movie is how the protagonist of the movie, John Groberg, can stay so ghostly pale throughout the film while living in the tropics.

The plot is that Groberg was a missionary to Tonga as a youth, and now has been asked to return to take over the entire mission of the region, encompassing many islands and people. It has all the makings of a very inspiring story, but unfortunately it just didn't come together.

The story was quite clearly about Mr. Groberg. His wife Jean Groberg and children were not given any personalities to speak of, and one of the my main criticisms of the movie is one that a lot of "faith-based" movies fall into, is that the "good people" can't be shown doing anything bad, making Groberg unrelateable, and his family so devoid of personality they might have well been cardboard cutouts.

My favorite scene in the movie was when Jean was going to give birth in the local hospital a group of natives showed up and started singing a song welcoming the newborn in to the world. This was very heartwarming, and if we did that in our hospitals, the country would be a better place.

One aspect of the movie I did NOT like was that it tasted of the "white man's burden". The Tongan Methodist minister there was such a brutal whacko he was going to drown a pig that a convert to mormonism gave him as an offering, because he didn't want gifts from the Mormons. Later, he buried his adult son up to his neck in the sand at that tideline to stay that way gasping for breath in the surf overnight as a way to "teach him a lesson" about not helping the Mormons. LOL, if that is how Christian ministers acted in Tonga, it's no wonder the Mormons could convert people! At this point, I didn't think anything racial at all, just that they were being heavy handed pushing their faith, which I could understand. Then their newborn son got sick, and the local Tongan doctor pretty much said, "it's beyond me, send him back to the U.S.", and "there's nothing I can do, start praying". The man was the only doctor on the islands, and was therefore the one responsible for dealing with every emergency and medical problem that showed up, and they made him look so incompetent it was embarrassing to watch. So how was the child saved? A passing white physician was dragged off his plane by the native police to teach the local doctor how to save the child before continuing his flight. Yeah.... I don't know. It just felt creepy in the same way that Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi felt creepy in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

LOL, the funny part about my indignance about the doctor's portrayal and the utilization of a passing white physician is that I remember reading in Kon Tiki how the men there who were sailing across the pacific on a raft they built (and who weren't themselves doctors) ended up operating on a native with instructions from a doctor given over a shortwave radio, so things like that must have happened IRL, but the way this was done was just... Not 2019 film quality.

One thing that REALLY and I mean ***REALLY*** bothered me was that when the Grobergs were told by the doctor that their newborn was sick, not eating, and likely going to die in the next few days if they couldn't get him to the United States, they showed multiple scenes of the parents just lying the infant down on a mat and apparently leaving him that way and watching him from a distance Seriously? You've been told your newborn is probably going to die in the next few days and you just set him down on a mat and leave him there in just his diaper in the cold? I would hold that baby in my arms until I passed out, and probably wouldn't let go of him then. Any mother would do the same, as would most fathers. The Grobergs though? Nope, put him down on the mat without even the comfort of his mother's arms! That still bothers me, LOL, and in its way seems more cruel than the savagery and brutality of the Methodist minister. Who would do that to an innocent baby?

Overall... it's not Aquaman bad, but there are so many distractions it isn't really that uplifting, either.