Our Rating: 1.00
Trying to avoid the lightning bolts now hitting Mel Gibson’s Jesus movie, this overwrought Easter pageant begins with a title card pointing out that crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish, mode of punishment. The facts thus established, we’re put on notice that we are about to experience a word-for-word dramatization of the gospel of John. Come back, little electrical storm: Its literal nature swiftly proves to be the three-hour movie’s undoing, with every last syllable of the text spoon-fed to us as dialogue or narration. In an unconscious nod to grammar-school filmstrips, voice-over talent Christopher Plummer describes each action in detail, even as it plays out before our eyes in all its humbly budgeted glory. At times, he interrupts Jesus himself (Henry Ian Cusick, a beatifically smiling hippie who appears to have fallen off the Almost Famous tour bus) to squeeze in a quick translation of an arcane term. “Messiah,” you see, means “Christ.” Now you say it! Don’t feel bad if you don’t get the hang of the Berlitz scripture lesson right away: You’ve got three hours.
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2003.