''Church Ball'' is a 2006
Sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
about a
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
team from a
ward
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a pris ...
of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...
(LDS Church).
This family-film and comedy was filmed in and around
Provo, Utah and is distributed by
Halestorm Entertainment
Halestorm Entertainment was a film production and distribution company based in Orem, Utah. It was founded in January 2001 by Kurt Hale and Dave Hunter, who were both film majors at Brigham Young University. Halestorm films were largely create ...
.
Plot
A local Utah LDS Church's holds the record as having the worst basketball team in the church ball league. The team has failed to make it into the church tournament in the past 20 years. Due to rumors of this being the last year of the league, former team coach, and now
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is c ...
Linderman (
Fred Willard
Frederic Charles Willard (September 18, 1933 May 15, 2020) was an American actor, comedian, and writer. He was best known for his roles in the Rob Reiner mockumentary film '' This Is Spinal Tap'' (1984); the Christopher Guest mockumentaries '' W ...
) has called Dennis Buckstead (
Andrew Wilson) to coach a team made of clumsy misfits to the championship.
Church expectations of brotherly love, sportsmanship, and fellowship fall prey to competitive fierceness in the effort to win, while Dennis works to bring unity and cooperation.
Production
The basketball games in the movie were filmed in the Salt Lake Park Stake's Stake Center.
It was also during the filming of this movie that actor
Gary Coleman
Gary Wayne Coleman (February 8, 1968 – May 28, 2010) was an American actor and comedian. Coleman was the highest-paid child actor on television throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. He was rated first on a list of VH1's "100 Greatest Kid ...
met his wife, Shannon Price. In an interview during an April 2009 broadcast of the
Opie and Anthony
''Opie and Anthony'' was an American radio show hosted by Gregg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia that aired from March 1995 to July 2014, with comedian Jim Norton serving as third mic from 2001. The show originated in 1994 when Cumia took part in ...
radio show, Coleman described his dissatisfaction with the film's quality, remarking that watching the production process was like "giving monkeys cameras and lights".
Reception
The
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
surveyed and, categorizing the reviews as positive or negative, assessed two as positive and ten as negative for a 17 percent rating. Among the reviews, it determined an average rating of 4.3 out of 10.
References
External links
*
*
*
2006 films
Mormon cinema
American basketball films
2000s sports comedy films
American sports comedy films
Christianity and sports
2006 comedy films
Halestorm Entertainment films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films
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