Have you gotten your copy in the mail yet? I did, about a week ago. sigh
Believe it or not, I’m not going to complain about WHAT they’re doing so much as HOW they’re doing it.
Somebody put up lots of money, probably millions, to have this turkey produced and distributed. If I were them, I’d be in court demanding my money back.
Technically, the film is okay, the cinematography is passable, it’s certainly not inspired. The special effects are passable or at least believable. There are angels appearing and a storm on the Sea of Gallilee (I believe) that looks good. That’s about the best I can say.
Otherwise, the films sucks, BADLY!! I’ve seen better acting out of highschool productions. The actors give no presence on the screen. They’re there, they say their lines, they move around and that’s it. There’s no emotion, no presence, nothing to indicate they’re feeling what they’re expressing thru words. Their faces are bland and lifeless. Their actions are minimal, either thru lack of inspiration on their part or criminal abdication on the part of the director.
The dialogue was taken from the Gospel of Luke. That’s fair enough, but while the Gospel of Luke makes for fine reading, it’s terrible as a screenplay or even a script for a movie. If the abdication on the part of the director with the actors was bad enough, the abdication on the part of the screen writer deserves banishment to the Lower Levels of Hell! Instead of seeing Jesus thru the eyes of Luke, a compassionate and learned man who relays his story to a friend thru letters, the movie turns into a set of disconnected vignettes, mainly Jesus’s parables and stories. There’s no connect or flow between the scenes. The actor walk into view of the camera, say some lines and nod sagely as Jesus says something, then walk off. There’s no impact or “umph” with the dialogue. Nothing conveys the importance of what Jesus is saying. The same scene could be done with the characters quoting the daily stock market report and we’d get the same emotional impact.
That’s probably the greatest sin of this movie. There’s nothing engaging about it, nothing that makes one ponder a moment and consider what’s being said. For a movie what was supposedly sent out to get people interested in considering Christianity as a religion, this film fails miserably. Anyone on the planet who was totally unfamiliar with the story of Jesus would probably view the film as; Jesus said some interesting things; some others got mad at him and then killed him; Jesus came back from the dead and said more interesting things; THE END. And that sums up this movie.
