Mini-review: The Nativity Story

The Nativity Story never carries its own weight in bringing the Biblical story of Jesus' birth to the screen. With a few minor exceptions, the cast and filmmakers relied on what's already been said to make the story matter to us.

Plenty has been said in lots of media over the centuries, of course. That's why The Nativity Story needed to take advantage of modern film to do something other than make the characters move and talk in a well-shot, realistic setting with good background mattes. But there's not one performance at the heart of the story to drive us forward through the drama. It lacks the Yul Brynners and Anne Baxters that made old Technicolor Bible epics like The Ten Commandments pop despite their Hollywood soundstage looks.

The Nativity Story's subplot about the Three Wise Men works better than most of the film, with an emotionally charged performance by Nadim Sawalha as Melchior and a little bit of humor. The first time we heard a funny line, we had to listen to it several times, both because everyone mumbles in various accents throughout the movie (we needed the subtitles anyway, so they should have just performed it in the original languages) and because the rest of the movie is so humorless and, well, reverent.

Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi tour de force Children of Men was last year's real nativity story, capturing the feeling of hope arriving through birth amid chaos and oppression. The Nativity Story gets the details right but never comes screaming to life as Cuaron's film does.