Il libro di Esther

The only reason I give this movie a score higher than 1 is that it made me laugh repeatedly. It was that bad. Production values were down to nil, and boy does it show. Oh, and you know the kind of acting where it's been rehearsed so often as a group that everybody knows what's going to be said next, so that everybody looks at the guy with the next line as soon as the current guy finishes his line? Yeah, that's the kind of movie this is. I absolutely couldn't believe somebody agreed to put it up on the big screen. It was totally the stuff of a high school play, okay, college, but no more. Again, hilarious.

Now, the cast. When I first saw Hadassah (Esther) I thought, sure, pretty face, but completely lacking any hint of an actual Jewish bloodline, as typically there are certain distinguishing features. (Nor does much of anyone else look Persian.) Also much older than the 'girl' of the biblical narrative and, accordingly, a bit paunched. Paunched? Really? The most beautiful virgin in the whole wide kingdom was paunched? I don't think so. Again, hilarious. And I'm still trying to get a handle on why Mordecai had a California-grade tan while almost everyone else was a nice, soft shade of pasty.

Okay, the acting. Stiff. Sometimes vacuous. Often sappy. Invariably affected. Watch this movie just for the exercise in squirming. Simply put, not believable. No, not ever.

Finally, (and, honestly, most importantly), this effort at a story drifted ridiculously far from the biblical one. They announce at the start of the film that the story is missing biblical elements and that it contains non-biblical ones, all in the name of dramatic effect. Really? Read the Book of Esther. It'll only take ten minutes. But despite its brevity it's one of the most inherently dramatic narratives in all of scripture. The idea that someone decided to change it for dramatic effect is absurd. It's also disingenuous. Following the story as it is written would have cost more. Tweaking, condensing and changing the order of events allows for a more concise script and a more abbreviated screenplay. Shame though. Too bad the producers weren't more well connected.

Someday someone will do this story up right. It'll be spectacular.

Without a shadow of doubt, this is the worst movie of the Book of Esther that my wife and I have ever encountered, let alone the worst adaptation of any Biblical book. The screenplay was atrocious, and the plot was sketchy given the many liberties taken the scriptwriter in a futile attempt to bring something fresh and novel to the age-old Biblical narrative. The direction, cinematography and editing left much to be desired. The lead actress was much too contemporary American in speech and mannerisms - not befitting of Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia. Some of the others in the cast were not convincing either. Our advice to film-buffs is to avoid this movie altogether. In other words, give this PureFlix film the flick.

I am saddened to say that this film is absolutely atrocious. I watched it a couple of months ago at a Youth Bible Study, and still cannot fathom the atrocities that I saw. Before I begin, I'd like to say that I am a fan of PureFlix and respect the fact that the production company does its best to make high quality Christian films as a means to spread the Gospel. However, the 'high quality' thing I just said up top extends millions of miles away from what one sees on 'The Book of Esther.' It is one of the worst movies I have seen in my entire life. (And I've watched crappy TV movies from both Lifetime and Sci-fy channel.)

To make my list of reasons easier, I will number them: 1. The CG is laughable. 2. The acting is as if the producers hired volunteers off the street instead of legit actors. 3. The props looked as if they were bought at Walmart - no lie. (e.g. Queen Vashti's wig looks like it was bought at the after-Halloween clearance section from Walmart. 4. All actors had different accents. (e.g. Queen Esther sounded like she came straight out of Los Angeles, which really threw me off). 5. Slight inaccuracies to the biblical account here and there, but nothing too major.

All in all, this movie is horrible. I know that budgets are not high enough to turn the movie into a big action-y straight-out-of-Hollywood movie, nor do I expect it to be, but I believe PureFlix could have done way better than this.

Seeing that this movie was made by Pure Flix Entertainment, a Christian movie production company, we thought we would see an accurate portrayal of this story. At the beginning of the movie, a disclaimer was shown stating that the producers have changed some details of events for dramatic purposes, which is understandable. Unfortunately, they lied. They didn't change SOME details - they changed almost ALL the details. The only similarity this movie has to the Biblical record is the names of the principal characters.

I'm extremely disappointed in David A.R. White as the director and writer Timothy Ratajczak (who has written many excellent Pure Flix movies) who are responsible for this piece of trash. I've always held White and his company Pure Flix in high regard. To see a Christian production company, who one would expect to be Biblically true to actual events chronicled in the Bible, produce a movie about Biblical events and completely change the details is inexcusable.

With their "dramatic license," this movie is completely unrecognizable as the story of Esther. The Veggie Tales episode on Esther is more accurate than this movie can ever pretend to be. I'd recommend watching that instead.

As I was watching this movie, the whole time I'm thinking, "this doesn't happen!" This movie is called "The Book of Esther". If this is what the movie is called, let it be true to its story. The fact that none of the events that happened in the movie happened in the book really saddens me. When I first saw this title, I thought, "oh okay. They made a movie about Queen Esther. I hope it's not like that 'Noah' (2014) movie, where the movie wasn't true to the actual story. The storyline is okay; only very very few parts were true to the actual biblical story, but other than that, this is not what happened. At all. They might as well rename the movie and the characters because I don't remember any of this happening. Unless I've been reading the story wrong my whole life, there were far too many errors for it to be named "The Book of Esther." Additionally, even if I didn't know the story of Esther, it looks like the movie was poorly made; when switching scenes, the outside home/palace would be shown to say "this is where the next scene is". The outside home/ palace that's shown is clearly computerized. I noticed right when I saw that it was poorly made. At some points, I thought I was watching a low budget theater show. I'm extremely disappointed with how it turned out and I do not recommend this movie to anyone who's interested in the story of Esther.