Overall Rating
  Awesome: 20%
Worth A Look: 33.57%
Average: 18.57%
Pretty Bad: 13.57%
Total Crap: 14.29%
8 reviews, 92 user ratings
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| Prince of Egypt, The |
by Rob Gonsalves
"Bland, too much a Disney copy."
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'Prince of Egypt' may just be worth sitting through to catch the Red Sea sequence -- but not necessarily because of the parting of the sea itself, though that's nicely done. No, what impressed me was the range of emotions flashing across Moses' face.With the Pharoah's army approaching, and the Hebrew people looking to him for guidance, Moses turns to the sea, looks to the heavens, and in his eyes we see a flicker of doubt, then a leap of faith, then a becalmed oneness with his God. It's a great, understated moment, far more subtle than anything Charlton Heston came up with at this crucial stage in Moses' career.
The moment stands out all the more because the rest of Prince of Egypt is frantic and loud, as if it were afraid to lose you -- or as if disproving our suspicions that this Biblical film, the first major cartoon feature by DreamWorks, would be reverent and dead. The movie isn't irreverent, but it's too alive: too much jostling and running around, not enough genuine awe. The movie's rhythm is set early on, when the infant Moses' floating basket encounters a series of lethal obstacles -- it's like Baby Indiana Jones and the River of Doom. The teen Moses is introduced to us in the middle of a rip-snorting chariot race with his brother Rameses; the horses gallop over rickety bridges and fall over towering sand dunes. Boy, these Egyptian heirs to the throne -- they work hard and they play hard.
The story of Moses is the primal story of self-discovery: When faced with the cruelty of the Egyptians towards the Hebrew slaves, Moses feels compassion that he can't possibly understand. We know why, of course, and part of the appeal of this story is watching Moses peel off his luxurious false self and find the harder road to his true destiny. What's most disappointing about Prince of Egypt, which clocks in at a mere 99 minutes, is that the journey is telescoped; it seems too fast and unearned, and nothing has any gravity. Some stories need an epic length, so that changes in character come gradually. Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 The Ten Commandments weighs in at three hours and forty minutes, and we get much more of a sense of what Moses is giving up (in Prince of Egypt, for instance, there's no tempting Nefretiri).
In this telling, Moses and Rameses are two fun-loving young guys, friendly competitors, until Moses becomes the leader of the Hebrews and brings plagues down on Egypt. Where's the fraternal resentment we remember so well between Moses and Rameses in Ten Commandments? Rameses is the first-born (and also the Pharoah's only true son), yet the Pharoah loves Moses more no matter how hard Rameses tries -- that should be the angle, but Prince of Egypt muffles it. There are no villains here -- we're told that the Egyptian leaders are acting out of the only tradition they know -- and this is a hell of a time for DreamWorks to try ambiguity. Are the filmmakers trying to avoid awkward moments between adopted kids taken to the movie by their adopted parents?
Technically, the movie is proficient. I'd put it up against Disney's recent stuff. But here, DreamWorks is trying too hard to beat Disney at its own game: The tone is textbook Disney, from the comic-relief characters (Steve Martin and Martin Short) to the pastoral images giving way to big musical numbers (which are generally duds). Of the celebrity voices, only Sandra Bullock and Jeff Goldblum (as Moses' true siblings) really stand out -- mainly because they don't sound like they belong in this setting. The credits tell us that Moses is voiced by Val Kilmer, but it could be anyone. And Moses is drawn as a Disney hero, too -- strapping body, eager face-splitting grin, basically Aladdin with a beard.God knows DeMille's epic wasn't art, but it was a glorious wedge of Biblical cheese. Given a choice between DeMille's form of show-biz pomp and Disney's (copied here by DreamWorks), I prefer DeMille's. 'Prince of Egypt' is hyperactive and visually busy without being much fun -- at least not as much fun as hearing Yul Brynner intone "Zo let it be written, zo let it be done," or watching Anne Baxter bat her eyes at the mud-stiffened Charlton Heston.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=186&reviewer=416
originally posted: 01/27/07 12:36:40
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USA
18-Dec-1998 (PG)
DVD: 14-Sep-1999
UK
N/A
Australia
26-Dec-1998 (PG)
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