Noah's Arkby Anonymous

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January 30, 2007: It is sad enough the writers couldn't get the historical data in chronological order. Then to go on and portray Noah as a man short of being a lunitic. The film makers took a wonderful opportunity and turned it into a circus!

Noah's Arkby Anonymous

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August 11, 2000: An all-star cast and the people behind some of the better recent TV mini-series have produced an astonishingly awful mess that will infuriate believers and confuse everyone else. First, in what can only be described as extraordinary disrepect for the source material (no one would do this to Shakespeare!), the stories of Noah and that of Abraham and Lot have been combined into nonsense. Second, with the exception of F. Murray Abraham who gives a controversial but interesting portrait of Lot as the man who wasn't worth saving, no one in this movie seems to know what they are doing! Jon Voight spends the entire film with a confused, cross-eyed expression that makes him look like he has just been hit in the head with a two-by-four. Mary Steenburgen spends the entire movie as the longsuffering ''sane'' one everyone depends on, patiently supporting her possibly crazy husband, except for her truly embarrassing ''crazy'' scene on board the ark. Carol Kane plays Lot's wife as such a shrew, the audience will cheer when she is turned into a pillar of salt! James Coburn is wasted in an utterly pointless role. The young actors and actresses playing Noah's sons and daughters-in-law are mostly wasted in undeveloped parts, and the actor who plays the Voice of God plays Him as a cruel smart-aleck! Worst of all, though, is the story itself. Unable to decide whether to produce an apocalyptic drama or a gentle family comedy, the filmmakers chose to do both, alternating between bad Disney-like comedy scenes and terrifying scenes of destruction. A final battle between Noah's family and Lot's Waterworld refugees starts out brimming with menace and degenerates into slapstick comedy. The problem of breeding on board the ark is solved by having God deliver the insane commandment that the four married couples must avoid having sex for the duration as an example! This plot device is introduced, argued about, made light of, threatened with violation, and then ultimately dropped like everything else resembling an idea in this disaster! Since everyone in this movie is clearly trying their best, it is amazing to see it go so badly wrong. If you can get through the unintentionally funny ''everyone goes crazy'' scene on board the Ark without laughing at the stupidity and amateurishness of it all, you are a better man than I am. Only the special effects rise to the level of adequate. We should consider ourselves fortunate that God promised never to destroy the Earth again with a flood; otherwise, this film ALONE could be considered just cause!

This review was written about the VHS edition.