The Prince of Egypt

Director: Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner
Cast:
Val Kilmer
Michelle Pfeiffer
Ralph Fiennes
Sandra Bullock
Jeff Goldblum
Genre: Family

I can't tell you how psyched I was for this one; my penchant for sweeping animation has reached a fever pitch as the technology gets more and more awesome. And with a story that is as wonderful as the Exodus book of the Old Testament, they'd really have to try hard to screw it up, huh? Like the Bible itself, it ain't that simple. Most of you know the story of Moses, but for those charming agnostics out there, it goes like this: fearing his death, Moses' mom lets Baby M drift down a river where he is found by the Pharaoh. He's raised as Rameses' rambunctious brother until adulthood, when he finds out he's adopted—realizing he's actually Hebrew, Moses goes off into the desert, talks to God and comes back to release his fellow men from Egyptian slavery.

Val Kilmer is just fine as Moses, albeit frequently upstaged by the better-voiced Ralph Fiennes as Rameses. But like most cakes, the frosting is the good part: Ofra Haza's song sung to the baby Moses is wrenchingly beautiful, and Jeff Goldblum (Aaron, Moses' brother) puts his tics to good use. But the stunner is the scene of pestilences, especially the last of them: when the spirit of God "passes over" the Hebrew houses and saps the breath out of each Egyptian firstborn, hardly a seat in the movie house could move. It is so unbelievable scary, so powerful and heartbreaking that I dare say it could be rough for some of your kids.

But nobody said the Old Testament wasn't cranky like that. And halfway through the movie, things take a turn for the religiously magnanimous and get a little boring. Even the parting of the Red Sea isn't much better than the one we saw in 5th grade with Charlton Heston, and the ending leaves out all the cool stuff between Moses and God that made the whole story such a perverse pleasure in the first place. Beautiful, yes. Powerful, mostly. Worthy of the Greatest Story Ever Told? Uh, well, maybe not.

—Ian Williams

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