A secular movie company tries to tell a biblical story for the masses. This will be...interesting.
Hello, Catholiccontriversy and I just saw Sony Pictures Animation's latest movie "The Star," a movie about the first Christmas as told by the animals. That's...quite a premise. I'm not saying this can't be good. DreamWorks did a really good job with the story of Moses. However, lets not forget that the last movie Sony did was The Emoji Movie, a really terrible movie. So, how does The Star fair?
Let me get some "technicalities" technicalities out of the way. The art and animation, pretty good. All the animals look decent (except for the gerbil, that was creepy), and there wasn't the overy cartoonish squash and stretch like one would find in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. A well appreciated attention to detail is the skin tone of the humans, with the characters physical features matching that of what historians believe people looked like back then. The celebrity voices were a little distracting, but it wasn't really "I'm a celebrity, look at me, I'm more important than Jesus," which it could have easily been. The music was contemporary and classic renditions of religious songs (what child is this, angels we have heard on high, rejoice Emanuel, etc.), and I really appreciate keeping it faithful to the meaning of the season.
The story is primarily about Bo, the donkey that Marry rides into Bethlehem on. This isn't the first time the first Christmas was told through the eyes of someone else. The Little Drummer Boy, the 4th Wiseman, and Nester the Long Ear Donkey come to mind, and all did a really good job. Bo, his dove friend David, and Ruth the Sheep, as well as the 3 wisemen's camels, are all there. As far as characters go, they aren't fully developed. Bo has ambitions, and they drive him, until he realizes his greater calling. David and Ruth are just companions for Bo, and the camels are comic relief for the really serious plot thread of King Herod's evil (and just to be wacky for the kids). Kind of, eh. But, the primary reason I'm watching is because of the greatest story ever told.
Now for the reason this is a "catholiccontriversy review" and not a "pokematic review." So, this is a movie about a very significant religious story. A very important one to the Christian faith. Easily one of the top 5 stories if not the most important. For a story of this importance, one better be careful. I'm going to go step by step throughout this review. Are these spoilers? Can there be since this is a story that has been around for 2018 years? Yes, lets just say there are spoilers.
Now, there are some deviations. I'm not saying "differences are always bad." The 4 different books of the bible have differences. There isn't an account of a 4th wiseman who wanted to give The Baby Jesus a sapphire, ruby, and pearl, but it's still a good movie that tells biblical stories. I'm not going to say "this is bad/good because it is accurate/deviates," but I am going to explain why each point works/doesn't work.
First off, lets talk about Mary telling Joseph about being pregnant with Jesus. Now, in the original story, this happens before they are married. In this one, it happens after they are married, and it's handled kind of like an accident. Marry is like "oh, Joseph, I have something important to tell you, uhhhhh...I love your donkey" completely deflecting, then Joseph just kind of figures it out when he sees the bulge. I can't help but feel that it's a tad disrespectful. It really rubbed me the wrong way. Every version I've seen where Marry tells Joseph she's pregnant with Jesus has her questioning how she will tell Joseph, and Joseph reacting to the news, handles things a lot more respectfully. They always are "how do I tell Joseph in a way that he will understand, and that this is a greater calling, and I'm not a whore." With this one though, I kind of get a feeling of "I got knocked up by God, will you help me raise his bastard son?" I feel dirty just having to retell the impression I got with it. Thankfully, this is the worst part in terms of respect.
The next thing is King Herod, and the goon he sends off to find and kill Jesus. This is a deviation that's very different from the source, but kind of needed from a narrative perspective. If you don't know, the 3 wise men that give Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh stop at King Herod in search for "Jesus, The New King," to which Herod is concerned for his thrown and tells the wise men to tell him where they are after they find him "so he can give worship" (but really he just wants to kill him). In all accounts and stories I've seen (regardless of if they have the wise men show up at Jesus's birth or afterwards), Herod successfully tricks the wise men and it's only after an angel tells the wise men to take a different rout home does Jesus live before the slaughter of the innocent. In "The Star" though, Herod tells the wise men to stay with him until Jesus is born, and the wise men catch on and leave (with their incredibly stupid camels), to which Herod sends a bounty hunter with evil dogs to track them down and kill Jesus. The bounty hunter and dogs are always close behind Marry and Joseph with Bo intervening to save them (and ultimately kill the human bounty hunter while saving the dogs after seeking redemption). Now, considering that this plot thread is used to add conflict while avoiding the slaughter of the innocent part of the account, I can see how this works from a narrative perspective. This adds tension and a villain based on what is actually in the biblical account, while being able to end on a happy resolution without having to tell the slaughter of the innocence. It's not, bad per-se. Considering Herod was a really bad guy, I could see him doing this. It's a little fantastical with the way the bounty hunter tracks Marry and Joseph; but it properly conveys how not everyone was happy with the birth of Jesus, and with how the bad dogs seek forgiveness in the end to have their sins forgiven ultimately through their faith in Jesus, I'll give it a pass. Just, if you're showing this to your kids, you might want to explain that this isn't exactly what happened with Herod, and the dogs became good because they sought forgiveness through God the bounty hunter died (yes, he really died) because he went against God.
Now, a majority of this movie is about Bo and his friends getting in little problems all with the ultimate goal of getting Marry and Joseph to Bethlehem and the 3 wise men trying to get to Jesus's birth. Some of it is sweet (like when Bo catches the royal caravan but decides he has a higher calling with carrying Marry), some is cringy (like Bo working as a mill donkey and only looking at the other donkey's butt), and the rest is just "filler" (like Bo trying to catch-up to Marry and Joseph after realizing his higher calling). Now, there isn't really much information about what happened between Marry and Joseph leaving Nazareth and traveling to Bethlehem, so I'm not going to really comment on it. It's trying to be entertaining for kids, and it's fairly harmless. In general, I like smaller stories that build on a pre-established story to tell the audience what happened during quick flash backs or a time skip. Putting on my movie critic hat, this is pretty simple and doesn't really entertain me, but it's not anything blasphemous. You just might want to remind your kids "we don't really have much information on what happened on they journey to Bethlehem, but animals don't really talk, so the stories of Bo aren't really part of the Christmas story."
Now the best part has to be the end. The last 20 or so minutes when they are entering Bethlehem, trying to find an inn, and narrowly avoiding the Herod's goon was amazingly well done (outside of some of the jokes about the stable with the heavenly light shining down on the manger). This was pretty great way of conveying the desperation that led the son of God to be born in a stable among the animals, a detail I know I'm guilty of forgetting when I think of the Christmas story. Then the narrow avoiding of Herod's goon was a great way of telling the tension of the slaughter of the innocent without actually telling the slaughter of the innocent. And again, aside from the couple of jokes about the heavenly light on the manger (and some bad jokes with the camels), it's pretty serious and handles things very respectfully. This was really well done. Granted, it's not completely faithful to the source, but it's faithful to the spirit.
So The Star, final verdict. Well, it starts off kind of rocky, but gets better as it progresses until it ends with being pretty faithful to the spirit of the Christmas story. If you're looking for a new Christmas classic, I don't know if I would say "this is it" with how wacky it tries to be. If you're just looking for SOMETHING to watch this Christmas season, you can give it a shot. I do question who this would ultimately be for though, since it might be a little hard for younger kids to follow and make sense of, and it might be a bit too juvenile for older audiences. I recommend ages 8-11, but I ultimately recommend watching it yourself and determining if it is right for your kids. I'm not saying "adults cannot find entertainment in it," but you might be better off finding another Christmas Story movie at your Christian book store.
Well, this has been Catholiccontriversy, signing off, and may God bless you.
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