I WENT OUT AND SAW

i went out and saw the prince of egypt this wednesday, and although it’s gotten sort of a bad rap in the media, and i can understand some of the quams reviewers have had with it, but most fail to realize the revolutionary nature of this film. the story was, well, the moses story, so there’s not much commentary to be made on that. the animation was suberb, absolutely fantastic. mainly, people complianed about the brevity of it and the inappropriate music (it was inappropriate some of the time, not all of the time), both of which i generally agree with. as a movie, it was merely ok. but as animation, it was a pretty big step foreward. That it was directed at an older audience than most mainstream animation, that it actually depicted violence, and that it was daring enough to take on so controversial and sensitive a topic as the moses myth are all drastically unique to the American animation scene. disney wouldn’t dare take on this kind of subject. the killing of the first born, the plagues, and the whippings (although not graphic) are much too violent for a formulaic disney epic. of course, all these things are in every bible that every christian child is encouraged to read, but that’s beside the point: the violence is controversial, mainly because in america animation has traditionally been thought of as a genre for the youth. the prince of egypt attempts to change that.

unfortunately, the movie often works against this goal by teeter-tottering between kiddy-flick and adult movie. it became evident as i was watching it that although dreamworks was eager to separate themselves from disney, they didn’t really want to stray too far from the beaten path. for instance, the two semi-comical priests (voiced by steve martin and martin short) are obviously intended to be humourous characters, like abu and the carpet in aladdin, inserted to add some comic relief to a very serious film. but in trying not to trivialize the serious nature of the film, the priests have been robbed of their funny lines, and merely come off as awkward. another example of this indecisiveness is the music. although the score is actually rather effective and unobtrusive, the story of moses probably wasn’t intended for a musical format. imagine: moses, struck by the guilt of seeing all the egyption first-born being killed by his God, hangs his head low. the viewer empathizes, feels moses’ intense pain, and is impressed by the fact that animation can convey this kind of emotion. and then moses bursts into song. EEEHHHH!!! emotion over, respect over, the film has reverted to the trivial disney-esque. i really, really, REALLY wish they hadn’t done that.

all in all, the prince of egypt is a step in the right direction, but i fear that it’s faults will curse the evolution of animation. i doubt it’s going to do that well in the box office, since dreamworks didn’t indulge in too much advertising so as not to commercialize the sacrosanct, so future film makers will probably think of more serious animation as guaranteed financial flops. i think the prince of egypt should have been more extreme. they should have tried to be more abstract and totally discarded any remnants of the disney-esque. then the film would have some shock value and estabish the fact that animation that’s not for kids does exist.