El príncipe de Egipto

As the author of THE WORLD OF ANIMATION, an Eastman Kodak book which won three international book festival awards and as an animation writer-director, I have for many years longed for the U.S. animation industry to remember that Walt Disney, nor any of the pioneers of animation limited their art to children's audiences.

With THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, the DreamWorks animation team has finally taken us full circle and helped the United States join the rest of the world in offering us the first U.S. animated feature since, perhaps, FANTASIA, created for mature audiences while remaining child-friendly. If you aspire to art in any form, and/or specifically love line art and graphics as I do, you must not miss seeing this film on the big screen. I applaud DreamWorks for this triumph in graphic excellence.

Two brief critiques: First, the choice of story. The story is based on Exodus from the Old Testament (and other Scripture) which is scanty, to say the least. Although the studio made an effort to flesh out the story with the Ramses/Moses relationship there is simply not enough meat to go around. This opinion is debatable, a very minor aspect and only my view as a story teller. At the bottom line the overall work is so extraordinary any possible lack in literacy is more than made up for in the visual mounting and production of the film, something which is nothing less than inspiring.

The other criticism is in the highly questionable use of "name" voices for casting, a puzzling development since there is no meaningful box office data supporting it. This practice is known to conflict the viewer psychologically as the drawn images begin to do battle with the ones in the audience memory with the cerebral bridge of highly recognizable photo images of known voices. Walt Disney knew this quite well and avoided it. Indeed, he used the voice of a complete unknown for Snow White, Adriana Caselotti, (who passed away in 1997). Disney was careful to avoid the existing Hollywood queens of song of the period, Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, the latter, whose prodigious vocal talent actually saved Universal Pictures from going belly up a short time later.

However, at the bottom line, THE PRINCE OF EGYPT will become a true classic and has taken the art of animation up to a new threshold, a model to which future animators will aspire.

Raul daSilva, New Haven, CT, USA

There is probably no greater literary classic than the Bible, and as such it is an obvious choice for Hollywood. But why then are there so few attempts to bring the stories we grew up on to the Big Screen? A very simple reason. In filming a Bible story, producers tread a very thin line. They know they have to make the story interesting, the graphics new and innovative or the movie will flop. But they cannot tamper too much with the original for fear of upsetting those who hold the story dear to their hearts. Unbelievably, Hollywood has finally managed to tread that thin line in 'The Prince of Egypt'.

At the very beginning of the movie, a beautiful worded statement appears on the screen, and as I cannot possibly say it better, I will reproduce it here. "The motion picture you are about to see is an adaptation of the Exodus story. While artistic and historical license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Moses can be found in the book of Exodus." Now that was just a classy thing to do. Yes, they did tamper with the story ever so slightly, but they never did anything to mess up the main storyline. They took some liberties with the character of Zipporah, Miriam, etc., but they never messed with the core elements of the story. Some of their changes are debatable, but not to the point of destroying the main point of the story. As a strong Christian, even I found nothing whatsoever to complain about in their telling of it.

Technically, the film is a triumph of computerized animation. The chariot race scene is revolutionary in that the "camera" is able to move around within a moving frame. It is one of the many subtle ways that this animated movie hardly seems animated at all. The parting of the Red Sea was enough to take my breath away, and the Plagues of Egypt sequence was also very, very good.

There was obviously a lot of research that went into the making of 'The Prince of Egypt'. Many of the monuments, frescoes, pieces of furniture, statues, etc. are genuine and can be found in the real life Egypt. Somebody did a lot of studying on Hieroglyphics and Egyptian paintings, as several specific scenes in the movie can attest.

I'd also like to say a few things about the meshing of music with the story. In general, when somebody starts to sing a song, the action stops. Not so in 'The Prince of Egypt'. Indeed, almost the opposite usually occurs. Time compresses within the song, with the action happening at almost double the speed of non-song time. For example, one song covers a span of approximately 40 years, from the time Moses first arrives in Midian to his burning bush experience. In this way, the guys at Dreamworks got the nuts and bolts of the story compressed down in order to give themselves more time to develop characters and other things necessary to make a good movie. I was very impressed at the subtlety of this approach. And the songs themselves are very well done. The soundtrack is a great mix of reverence, ethnic flavor and adventure. Various themes associated with certain events and people wind their way through the music in a better-than-Wagnerian fashion. Moses' mother's lullaby is especially poignant - bravo to the composer. It actually made me cry.

The entire movie is a masterpiece. I'm so glad it made money and did so well. I hope that its great success will allow the people at Dreamworks to make another Biblically based movie, hopefully as good as its predecessor. 'The Prince of Egypt' is not only a great story, it has the advantage of being "true". The tone is very religious, while not being preachy. The burning bush scene is absolutely beautiful. Watch the movie just for that, and enjoy the rest of it as well. The Death of the Firstborn is very dramatic, but not creepy like in 'The Ten Commandments'. I was thoroughly impressed. But above all, the story is interesting, fast-paced and engrossing. The characters are real and their problems are very relatable. There are marvelous moments of comedic relief and moments of terrible mental anguish. This is no dry story from some dusty old book. This is a living, breathing, story. 'The Prince of Egypt' has become one of my very favorite movies and one of the few "cartoons" that continues to be frequently reached for.

Let's forget for a while religions and conflicts between humans. Let's focus on the huge amount of creativity and greatness that made this masterpiece. Although DreamWorks have imitated Disney on different levels but the result surprised all those who watched it. The title itself implies that a great story took place in an old great civilization. In my opinion, the story of this movie is not like what most of people think: conflict between good and bad. It's way beyond that. It's a story of two real brothers who love each other to the core but they were obliged to become enemies due to their differences in beliefs and religion. Don't you think that it's time for people to forget about their differences and become compassionate and empathetic? Love will unite us while religions make us enemies to each other. The music was outstanding, as well as the songs. The soundtracks of this film make the spectator live in old Egypt which is a very genius innovation by the composer. Very few composers know how to connect their music with an epoch, land and a place. The first scene when slaves were building the pyramids was one of the best starts in movies history. Simply it's one of the best movies in history. It's a combination of greatness and beauty.

The Prince Of Egypt is an extremely powerful movie. Amazing visual, score, story, music, characters, and everything else. You need to watch this movie. You will not regret it.

The story of Moses is done here and, although not totally Biblically accurate, this is about as close as it gets in Hollywood. The inaccuracies are minor.

The artwork was fabulous when it came out in 1999. It's still very good, but animation has improved so fast in so short a time period that this is nothing special, art-wise, these day. However, it sure was when it was released just seven years ago. It's just beautiful in parts. Some of the prettiest colors I've seen on film have been in animated movies the last decade, and this is a prime example. The parting of the Red Sea in here is awesomely-done by the artists. That scene also sported the best sound in the 99-minute film.

The songs in here were nothing special but they didn't detract from the story because they were all short. Regarding the story, I only wish they had gone into detail on the plagues instead of just lumping them all together. They could have had some jaw-dropping scenes with the locusts, etc.

All-in-all a fine film and a rarity: a Biblical film that doesn't offend anyone.