Well, I’ve watched it and that’s a couple of hours of my life I won’t get back. It was a fabricated story apparently based very loosely using the Biblical narrative of the birth of Jesus as its theme.
Anthony Hopkins played Anthony Hopkins pretending to be a grumpy, murderous king called Herod. He blinded a poor chap called Baba Ben Buta. We knew he was blinded because he had a big bandage around his eyes in another scene where he married the characters of Joseph and Mary.
There was some nice cinematography, with horses galloping through water, and one pretty scene going off into the sunset. There were some dodgy costumes and even more dodgy head gear. I think the milliners must have had a very tight budget.
There was a bit of a stand off over the character called Mary when she was a maiden in the inner temple. The stand off was in a corridor, between a mysterious and evil sounding man dressed in a large hooded cloak, sporting some very dodgy dental work, and another bloke dressed in a large blue cloak (we saw him a few times). The one with the ugly teeth was called Lucifer and the one in the blue cloak was called Gabriel. The manky-teeth-man growled a couple of times, but did not do an evil mwah-ha-hah laugh.
We saw Lucifer again when he carried Mary off in his arms (hmmm, she was sort of levitated in his arms) when she fainted in early labour in a market square - her hubby had nipped off to try and find them a room for the night. When he got back to find her missing, Joseph grabbed a sword off a soldier, chased after manky-teeth-man to rescue Mary. Mary woke up from her faint in a house which had lost its roof and continued in her labour, with the help of a few women. The baby was born looking three months old and looked like it was wrapped in Mary’s lacy wedding dress.
I was very disappointed not to see shepherds with tea towels on their heads, no nighttime sock washing, nor to see we three kings from orient are. Very disappointed too to not see any cute donkeys or other animals in the house with no roof.
I found it tedious and boring, and found myself nodding off once or twice, so had to rewind. They say all the best stories contain an element of truth - it wasn’t even a good story, let alone a ‘best’.