Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Danny Glover Partrick Stewart
What do you do when trying to compete with Disney for supremecy in the animated movie game. Let's see, you can try and do something completely different and maybe go with a film that is more dramatic... but to pull that off for the first time it is best to stick with a story that most people will know pretty well. What else? Well, you could also try and lure away some of the people that made previous Disney movies so popular. Well, if both of these don't sound like to bad of an idea (or if they sound like a horrible idea), both of these are exactly what Dreamworks did trying to join Fox (with Anastasia) and Warner Brothers (with Quest for Camelot) in an attempt to undermine Disney's supremecy in animations. For starters they departed from Disney's aim towards a young "kiddie" audience and were more risky by bringing you the ancient Biblical story of Moses which is at least vaguely known by millions and millions of people. Second, they tempted many former Disney employees over to Dreamworks' ranks to work on this film. The main director (Brenda Chapman) worked on The Lion King, three of the main people behind the artistic part of the film: the storyboard person, Kelly Asbury; the supervising animator, James Baxter; and the main musical composer, Hans Zimmer all have worked on previous Disney projects. Most notably of these is Hans Zimmer who wrote the score for The Lion King. With this crew, and some of the huge voice talent they got for the cast, it seems obvious that Dreamworks was going right for the top, and they almost made it.
Moses (Val Kilmer) and his foster family
The plot of The Prince of Egypt is virtually untouched from the story from the Book of Exodus. In fact the producers enlisted the help of hundreds of theologans to make sure the story was biblacly accurate. As soldiers of the Egyptian Pharao Seti (Patrick Stewart, Star Trek: The Next Generation) carry out his orders to drown all male Hebrew babies. Desperate, Moses's mother places him in a wicker basket and prays that the Hebrew god (hereafter referred to as God) protect her infant son. After floating down the Nile the basket ends up at the palace of the Pharao and is found by the Pharao's wife. After growing up as a Prince of Egypt and brother of Ramses (Ralph Fiennes, The English Patient), Moses (Val Kilmer, Top Gun and Tombstone) learns from his sister Miriam (Sandra Bullock, Speed... his real sister) who is a Hebrew slave, the truth about his identity. Shocked but what he has learned, Moses flees into the desert where he runs into a sheep hearding tribe and meets Tzipporah (Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Minds) his future wife, and he is eventually confronted by God (also voiced by Val Kilmer) through the vision of a burning bush. God instucts Moses to go to Ramses and ask him to let his people go. But of course Ramses refuses and God brings a series of curses and plagues (from droughts to locusts). But Ramses is too stubborn until God brings a great pestulance that kills the first born child of every non Hebrew in Egypt. After agreeing to free the Hebrews, an Enraged Ramses follows Moses and his people a plans to kill them until God gives Moses the power to part the Red Sea.
Moses and Ramses (Ralph Fiennes) race to see who has worse hair
The greatest strength of The Prince of Egypt is also the one thing that prevents young children, or children at all from enjoying it... its attention to the original story. I'll admit that I did not know a lot of the details of the story and this movie helped me fill them in, so to me this movie was very much worth it. But, for any children pretty much under the age of 13 (maybe even older then that, more like 15) it will not be nearly as interesting. It is just hard for a young child to appreciate the whole point of the story or the significance, because of this I would not recommend you bring your children or you little siblings or cousins to this movie. It also probably won't have as big of an affect on someone who is not either Jewish or Christian, although it should still be interesting. I do believe, however, that Dreamworks more than accomplished its goals with The Prince of Egypt. It didn't gain any on Disney's stranglehold on the childrens animated feature... but then again it wasn't really trying to. It did make leaps and bounds, however, on the dramatic animated feature (which I bet a lot of you didn't even know existed)... and Disney is going to have to have to keep working to stay ahead of, or even keep up with Dreamworks in that department. So for the moment Disney is still the King, but it knows that Dreamworks is nipping at its heals.
