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Poster for The Best Two Years
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Released
2004 · FILM

The Best Two Years

Every moment counts.

Directed by
Runtime
112 min
ComedyDrama

Synopsis

Two pairs of Mormon missionaries from America live in a beaten-up apartment in the Dutch city of Haarlem. Their personalities are distinctly different. Elder Johnson is the District Leader and oversees their efforts. His companion, the vain Elder Van Pelt, seeks to become the assistant to the mission president (the top post available) as soon as possible. The capable Elder Rogers has become disillusioned and inattentive to his duties ever since a previous missionary companion returned to America and married Elder Roger's girlfriend. The three meet Elder Roger's new companion, Elder Calhoun, in the train station. This new elder is a nerdy but enthusiastic "greenie" that has just arrived from the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Utah. Unfortunately, his training did not give him much fluency in the Dutch language. But as luck would have it, the first person he approaches to proselytize is a fellow American named Kyle.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Wynn HougaardShot by Gordon LonsdaleScored by John BatdorfDesigned by Darin Andersen

Box Office

2004 · Box office

Made its money back — grossed 2.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$1.2M

Budget$400K
Worldwide gross$1.2M
break-even (2.5×)

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