This is truly a spectacular film. As I’ve said, I am, by no stretch of the imagination, particularly religious. Even so, this movie was just as enjoyable for me as it would have been had I known the story by heart. I mean, I had been to Sunday school enough to kind of explain to Larissa and Bridget what was going on, but the last time I went was sometime in the beginning of third grade.
Anyhow, one of the best things about this movie is that it is so completely unlike anything Disney ever has or ever will make. There were no cute sidekicks, no continuity errors (ask Servo and Crow about those!), the antagonist was portrayed more fairly, the story was handled very seriously with minimal jokes, the romance was dealt with and then gotten out of the way, the characters and story were not Westernized too much, and they actually incorporated the Egyptian culture. Once again, this lowered it in the eyes of many, but it only proved to me once more that DreamWorks is willing to, and quite capable of, straying from the beaten path and producing a quality piece of work.
Another of the things that I was particularly pleased with was that the main characters were far from perfect and were not beautiful. On the same token, the background characters were not necessarily horribly misshapen. Of course the slaves were, but just looking at the crowd and then looking at the crowd in, say, HoND, you’ll see a huge difference. But as I was saying, Miriam, for example, looked nothing like your typical Disney femme with her childish face. But she was a main character all the same. Moses had quite the hair problem going there, and he was certainly not your basic macho-man ideal of a cute guy. And what was up with the way he ran? And the “villain’s” design wasn’t anything like your typical Disney bad guys’. In fact, he was by far the most macho of all. But my favorite thing about it was the animation and how they did the Egyptian culture so well. Aside from the CGI, the animation was breathtaking. The shots of Moses and/or Rameses walking away from Seti were incredibly realistic. You almost forget that it was animated. As for the CGI, much like the case of TRtED, it was just too perfect for the animation. The water looked so real that it stuck out like a sore thumb. But I shouldn’t complain. On to the latter. The dream sequence was so incredibly neat. It did make me a tad motion sick there for a minute, but I was in awe the while time. The wall paintings looked like they were straight off of a pyramid, and the buildings themselves were wonderfully done. Though I hated “Playing with the Big Boys” (and now have it stuck in my head just from typing the name), the chant before it really impressed me. They actually took the time needed to find the names of such obscure deities as Anukis, Heket, Seker and even Selket (who is a personal fave of mine). And they pronounced them RIGHT! This does, however, insure that there will never be an Egyptian myth animated, but at least they got the most out of it while they could.
So, congratulations, DreamWorks, on another job well done!
Prince of Egypt was directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, produced by Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins, the executive producer was Jeffrey Katzenberg, and it was written by Philip LaZebnik. The Musical Score was written by Hans Zimmer and the Songs by Stephen Schwartz.
Thanks to Animated Sexy Men for the pics.
