Sometimes you just want to smile and laugh at the day. Exodus Reviews are in to make my dreams come true.
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Let’s go to the game tape shall we…
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We can start with the NY Times – which titles the review Moses Is Back, Bearing Tablets and Strange Accents. Great start! He starts with a Seder joke and goes on to make fun of the casting choices. Here is a nice piece acknowledging the tradition of casting in Hollywood blockbusters, while finding something new to make fun of…
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“The casting of “Exodus,” with mostly American, British and Australian actors in Middle Eastern and African roles, has raised some eyebrows, and while these choices represent a failure of imagination and sensitivity, they are also consistent with that old, stale tradition. So is the curious decision to encourage the performers to speak in strange, geographically and historically preposterous accents.”
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Nice….
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It calls it pseudo-Oxford speak with lisps and sighs. But then he turns to Christina Bale. Apparently he is
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| I'm ready for my fist-bump Mr. DeMille... |
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“Strangest of all is Christian Bale as Moses, raised in the Egyptian royal court as a brother to Ramses and blind to his true heritage. Eventually, of course, Moses discovers his Jewish roots, which means that he stops shaving, starts herding goats and, unless my ears deceive me, takes to peppering his speech with stagy old-man Yiddish inflections, as though preparing to lead his people from the fleshpots of Egypt into a borscht belt Canaan. You think this desert is dry? You should try my wife’s brisket.”
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But they lose my attention in the next line, “Alas, Mr. Scott is not Mel Brooks. “Exodus” is ludicrous only by accident, which isn’t much fun and is the surest sign of what we might call a New Testament sensibility at work.”
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So, no 10,000 BC then?
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Let’s move on. LA Weekly is always a go to for bad movies…
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“Alas, Scott and the screenwriters spent less attention on the story. Granted, the plot outline is more than two millennia old: Moses discovers he's Jewish, demands liberty for the Hebrew slaves, and wins only after 10 terrible plagues and a chase through the desert. But Scott, either from fear or distraction, has no take on what the story might mean. A budget this big ensures he's gotta sell tickets to Bible-thumpers and spectacle-loving heathens alike. Yet he can't decide if making rivers run with blood is heroic or horrific — you sense he'd rather make Gladiator II: Attack of the Frogs. (Thanks to a distracting father-versus-son-versus–favored adopted son plotline, he essentially has.)
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Scott skips over the creation of the rituals of Passover, and he dodges any discussion of faith deeper than side-with-this-guy-and-you-won't-get-killed. As a result, Bale's Moses is paralyzed. In scripture, he seems to enjoy raining locusts upon Egypt. Here, he whines to God that the plagues are going too far, and then simply stands by after the boy-lord snaps, "For now, you can watch."”
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Apparently God in this movie isn’t Cecile’s booming disembodied voice. It is a child, and the reviews seem to vary widely.
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LA Weekly: Here, God — a small, tantrum-throwing boy who looks as if he enjoys burning ants — orders Moses to wreak havoc on the Egyptians.
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LA Times: God, however, has other plans for Moses, including appearing to him as that 11-year-old boy (Isaac Andrew), an idea that sounds intriguing in theory but is ineffective in practice, as deity and prophet bicker constantly over Moses' reluctance to accept his destiny as well as the Almighty's Hebrew liberation strategy. It's not a pretty picture.
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Entertainment Weekly: As Moses grapples with his existential crisis, he's visited by God in the form of a petulant young boy with a British accent — a casting choice I suspect many will find problematic, mystifying, or just plain laughable. In my case, it was all three.
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NY Times: God appears to Moses in the person of a young boy (Isaac Andrews), a bold and in some ways genuinely radical choice. His spooky, icy voice urges Moses toward extremism
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No, I miss the good old Nefertiti Love Triangle...
