You know how Dracula wants to give dramatic words, then turns into a bat and flies away? It turns out that the angel Gabriel does something similar, only it turns into a blue scarf, the same kind of smazzy number you get your mum in Monsoon as a birthday present. Whoosh! Take him away, he goes. Unfortunately, Gabriel-as-knitwear seems like a delight in this biblical adaptation of the early years of Mary, the mother of Christ.
Actually, this is not pretty. Anthony Hopkins as Herod understands the assignment, bellowing lines like “KNEEEEEEEEL!” enough to taste We have seen him before tasting the ham served, yet in lavish gifts, as in the Silence of the Lambs he follows Hannibal and the Red Dragon; This is more ham-fisted, the kind of wickedness Hopkins can bring out in his dreams. Not that it isn’t entertaining to watch, but Herod could only use his screen twice at a time.
The titular Mary (Noah Cohen) is something of a reticule, prone to piety, as she “delights daily in the mysteries of the Lord.” Fair enough, the future mother of God. But when he tells of a man who has just been brutally blinded by Herod that “vision comes in many forms,” you can see how people can escape religion so violently. The last scene turns into a vernacular hero’s surprise – “You may think you know my story. “Trust me, no” – doesn’t help matters. This is followed by the best sequence of the film, in which the baby Christ is saved from the swords of Herod’s henchmen, as Bethlehem burns and our heroes lead Hell out of the raging hell on horseback. There is also a good bit in which Mary He is forced to impale the baby Jesus on a vine and lift him up to the roof.
Alas, you have to sit through many tumultuous Bible studies, dramatizations, and scraps of Scripture to get to the good harvest. All of the year Journey to Bethlehema musical of the same material as Antonio Banderas and Herod’s cover, it represents more of a bang for the biblical goat.