In different hands, the documentary Cleanflix would be a true, holier then though documentary masterpiece that makes the high-minded average progressive feel superior just by the fact of its existence. Fortunately, Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi are better filmmakers than that, and because of their efforts, this film has one thing the average Michael Moore rake out doesn’t have: pathos for the skewered. In the state of Utah, also known as the heart of Mormon country USA, a movement began at the beginning of the century to produce films worthy of being exhibited to the morally pure members of the Church of Latter Dar Saints.

The problem though is that these films were made by Hollywood, and a company by the kitten-friendly though still Orwellian manicure “Clean Flicks” was ripping movies on DVD, editing out the naughty bits (ie: sex, violence, nudity and swears) and selling them to people that like the patriotic theme of Saving Private Ryan, but are morally outraged by all that graphic war stuff. So far as business models go, Ray Lines had stumbled upon a winning formula, and soon a business he was basically running out of a backroom became a multi-million dollar venture with franchise opportunities and knock-off artists in the midst.

And that’s where the evil empire comes on to the stage. Hollywood, citing artist violation and lost cash, came knocking on Clean Flicks door with their dollar sign bags. But oddly enough, it wasn’t Clean Flicks corporate that started the legal action. The protracted courtroom battle ended up killing Clean Flicks, but much like Napster and digital music downloads, the proverbial cat was out of the bag. Archival footage of filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Curtis Hanson talk about the uncoolness of having some guy in Utah taking scissors to their art work and called in Traffic or 8 Mile.

But on the other hand, several patrons of Clean Flicks ask, if there’s such a demand for ‘sanitized’ versions of R and PG-13 rated movies, then why doesn’t the film industry just release the airline and cut-for-TV versions of these films on DVD and cut out the middle men like Clean Flicks? My question wasn’t answered though: why would clean wholesome people want to watch a movie like The Matrix anyway, even if you edit out all the swears and kill shots? What gets you is when Ray Lines brags about his editing skills, and the massacred clip of The Big Lebowski comes out not making a lick of sense at all. Or seeing Kate Winslet’s nude scene in Titanic covered with a Photoshop nightie, clearly missing the point of her posing for the nude drawing as a startling act of independence from her possessive fiancé. Needless to say, for the average movie fan, the Clean Flicks cut always has more laughs than intended.

But I don’t think that’s to say that James and Ligairi are producing a polemic on the Clean Flicks philosophy, and this is one of those rare cases where both sides of the argument may carry validity. Where Clean Flicks goes off the rails is in the case of Daniel Thompson, who owned a Clean Flicks store and kept running it with a new distributor even after Hollywood shut Clean Flicks down. Using a loophole in the law for Fair Use for educational purposes is where Thompson hung his faulty premise. It could be seen as a moral stand, but the debate over whether two wrongs making a right is inconsequential when there’s money to be made hand over butt.

Then, for the topper, it’s revealed that Thompson and a colleague tried to solicit child prostitution and did so in the back of the Clean Flicks store. Thompson again proves that there ain’t no hypocrisy like crazy religious sect philosophy, and again, from the moral high ground, a lot of enjoyment is mined from this fact. But the movie worked so hard to find balance, that taking one last mickey out of the Clean Flicks company on this basis seems like schadenfreude. Obviously, courting a 14-year-old for fellatio is wrong, but the debate in this movie isn’t that moral majority are closet kinksters, but there’s a legitimate discussion over this highly charged artistic and legal issue. Seeing Thompson get his comeuppance was great, but it had nothing to do with Clean Flicks.