Il principe d'Egitto

For sheer spectacle, it's tough to beat the Bible. With "The Prince of Egypt," DreamWorks makes good on its promise to deliver a state-of-the-art animated film that will compete favorably with the best Disney has to offer. As with "Antz," released earlier this year, DreamWorks has successfully resisted the temptation to populate this film with characters that can be turned into further revenue through toy sales. (I do wonder, though, if three soundtrack albums--the film's soundtrack, an "inspirational" album, and a "country" album--were really necessary.) The animation team has accomplished something truly spectacular; watching "The Prince of Egypt" is like seeing life breathed into a rich, luxurious tapestry. The Biblical story told in the books of Genesis and Exodus is followed very faithfully, with only minor changes made for dramatic reasons. The action sequences are truly exciting, overall pacing is excellent, and the miracles wrought by God are depicted with awed and respectful wonder. One truly astonishing, harrowing sequence recounts the slaughter of firstborn Hebrew children by bringing hieroglyphic drawings to life on the walls of an Egyptian temple. The voice work is especially good--Val Kilmer is fine as Moses, and Pharoah, voiced by Ralph Fiennes, positively seethes with arrogance and hubris. The storytellers wisely chose to end their tale at the climactic crossing of the Red Sea; even the delivery of the Ten Commandments is portrayed only in an epilogue vignette. (After all, the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years after that, and Moses ultimately is not allowed to enter the Promised Land--perhaps not the uplifting ending the filmmakers had in mind.) Some of the subject matter is dark and disturbing, and there is no shying away from the harsh realities of the original texts. By all means, see it with the children in your life--and be prepared to discuss it with them afterward.

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.

This film did a pretty good job of sticking to the Bible,this is a wonderful family film.

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.

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