Dreamworks #2: The Prince of Egypt

The Prince of Egypt - 8.3/10

Talk about ambitious. For your second project, you’re going to tackle a story that probably 98% of everyone in the Western world is at least nominally familiar with, and to a good number of them it’s more than just a story. Imagine the nerd rage whenever a comic book or fantasy adaptation film gets even the slightest thing wrong. Now crank that up to eleven and multiply the nerds by a couple million or so. This movie could have gone horribly wrong.

On the plus side, if you do a good job, just like those comic book and fantasy adaptations, you’ve got a pre-existing fanbase. And on the whole I’d have to say they did a pretty good job.

This was a big one for the Dreamworks team. They had a good start with Antz, but this is where they needed to prove they weren’t a one-hit-wonder. You could tell they were putting a lot of effort in for that as much as to do justice to such an iconic story. And as an outsider – that is, someone for whom the story has no special meaning beyond simply being a good story – it was fun for me too, so they managed to avoid the pitfall of being too preachy. An impressive feat.

They really went with the human angle on this one. A must, really, unless you’re making a film for Sunday School. We got a good look at who Moses was, what kind of person he was and his relationship with his family. In this too I was pleased that the royal family of Egypt were not portrayed simply as heartless villains, but as real people in their own right who simply let their privilege blind them to the needs of others.

Moses’s transformation to a better man was well played, and even though it was mostly via montage, they managed to portray his developing relationship with his wife with a degree of tenderness that kind of makes you wish the whole movie was about them. The plagues were impressive, but I wish more time had been spent on them. They kind of happened all at once in another montage, when I think delving into them one at a time would have been more powerful. Then again, it could have made things drag on too long, so I’m not sure what the happy medium would be.

The final plague was of course played out in full, and throughout the whole ordeal Pharaoh was given very realistic reasons for refusing Moses repeatedly. The seeds of this were planted early on, when we see the two princes interacting with their father. Pharaoh was a complex character who was as much concerned about his legacy and that of his kingdom as much as he was the here and now. 

The visuals were spectacular as well, even down to just the scenery of the Nile River and the kingdom that thrives upon its banks. There were some great songs too, but I will say this: I think there was too much singing. A couple of them I really liked, as I said, but you couldn’t go five minutes without some character bursting into song about something or other. It had me rolling my eyes after a while. I kind of wonder if some Dreamworks producer was looking at the successful Disney films of the day and thinking, “They’ve got songs. We’ll have songs too! All the songs anyone could ever want!” And then there’s some maniacal laughter or something, I don’t know.

Once again they had some celebrity stunt casting, but it wasn’t so much distracting this time as it was not all the actors fit the characters they portrayed. In particular I really wasn’t feeling Steve Martin and Martin Short as the high priests, but for the most part everyone performed their roles at least adequately. Makes me wonder what could have been if they’d gone for real voice actors, though.

All told, a solid second outing. Enjoyable, impressive to look at, and does justice to an ancient story. Well done, Dreamworks. You’re playing with the big boys now.