The Prince of Egypt (1998, PG)

As Reviewed by James Brundage

Okay: I'm satisfied. I expected POE to be just an animated "10 Commandments", NRA member Charlton Heston and all. Either that or I expected it to be a Jewish-pride film. I have really nothing much against either (in fact with the South Park (anti-semite central) movie coming out, we should re-release Schindler's List), its just that I was hoping for something differrent.

I got it.

I'm on a lucky streak with movies that way. Psycho was a fine film, no matter what my cohorts will think of it remaking the sacred cow of Hitchcock. StarTrek: Insurrection finally got the seemingly doomed save-the-universe and thanks for all the phasers franchise out of its two movie long rut. You've Got Mail, though as basically cliche in storyline as any other romantic comedy, was such a well developed movie that you can't help but smile. And now I get to see Prince of Egypt, one of the best animated films of the decade.

Combining Disney-class hand drawn animation and CGIs, Prince of Egypt is a technically brilliant film. Barring that, the book of Exodous has been and probably always will be a wonderful story, and this film does it justice.

I don't think I need to tell you the story, but I will anyway. Moses is born while all babies are ordered executed by the pharoh of Egypt. His mother places him in a basket, sends him down the Nile, where, whoops, he ends up in the palace.

Cut to twenty years later: Moses is a prince of Egypt, not knowing that he was born Hebrew. When he discovers this fact, he goes to the desert where, after several years, he sees a burning bush telling him to free his people.

All of this we know.

The interesting thing about Prince of Egypt is, actually, the characters. You would figure that 6,000 year old characters wouldn't have much room for being dynamic or unexpected, but they are. The heartbreaking centerpiece of the film is the relationship between Moses and Ramases, the doomed pharoh. While, in Exodus, they are fairly black and white characters, Moses is shown in this film as a man not wanting to bring any harm onto his brother, with equal sentiments from Ramases. Not only that, Ramases is made a sympathetic character due to the fact that he is portrayed as only trying to live up to his father.

Sure, right-wingers may be offended by this adulteration of biblical history, but both the movie and I call it poetic liscense. And, unlike Patch Adams, which takes poetic liscense and creates a love interest out of thin air, this one is truer to what the actual events probably were.

Now, as just about anyone involved in the rather soulless business of film, I am not a religious man. I still think that this film should go in your video collection. Does that tell you something?