The Other Side of Heaven brings to the screen the true story of John Groberg, a Mormon missionary to Tonga from 1953 to 1956, based on his memoirs. The film follows a “the adventures of” formula, with beautiful scenery, though the movie was actually filmed in the Cook Islands, not Tonga. The film begins in 1953 during a dance at Brigham Young University. As a devout Mormon, nineteen-year-old John (played by Christopher Gorham) is invited to become a missionary in Tonga, so he pledges to his college sweetheart Jean Sabin (played by Anne Hathaway) that he will remain loyal and marry her when he returns. His family in Idaho Falls, Idaho, hug him goodbye, and he takes a train to a port and thence boards a ship for Pago Pago, American Samoa. From there, since there is no direct ship for Tonga, he instead travels to Suva, Fiji. Without a proper visa, he is incarcerated upon arrival along with contraband livestock until the sound of his bugle alerts missionaries at Suva of his presence. He then sails for Nuku`alofa, the capital of the Kingdom of Tonga, where he meets Feki (played by Joe Folau), who in turn accompanies him on an 800-mile boat trip to an outlying island where he is assigned. Among the perils that he confronts are the language, the customs, the diseases, the weather, and a rival missionary. (Regarding the language, writer-director Mitch Davis allows mispronunciations of the name of the country, which is properly transliterated, “Tong`a.”) The heart of the film is how he surmounts the many difficulties in an exemplary Christian manner, accomplishing much more than the higher-ups in the church expected. Eventually, his assignment ends, he leaves tearfully, and he returns to marry his sweetheart in 1957. Titles at the end tell not only of his subsequent life but also of his Tonga compatriots, Feki and another Tongan, both of whom died of bone cancer after later assisting in the construction of the airport at Niue. Not an official product of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Mormon beliefs are presented without rigidity, so the movie may serve a role in proselytization for those who are offended neither by religion nor by the “whites know best” presumptions, yet The Other Side of Heaven is still an excellent adventure film. MH