Truly Dreadful Film

Perfect cast and a good story

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I was very surprised that there were such negative reviews! The movie is called "Mary, Mother of Jesus". It was Her Faith that propelled her husband St. Joseph, to be a Protector and basically live a nomadic life. It was her steadfast faith and teaching that shaped Our Lord. It was indeed a perspective of the Blessed Mother. All of the Principal Actors were outstanding! I can not imagine anyone else emoting the Holiness of Jesus with the excellence of Christian Bale. He was amazing! I loved both the young and adult Jesus, as well as the young and adult Mary. The movie stated that it was an artistic perspective. Geraldine Chaplin's agonized expression at the loss of her son, "John the Baptist" is haunting. We walked with Mary and St. Joseph as the challenges presented themselves, yet always learning. I felt closer to The Blessed Mother at the end of the movie, and I think that was the point.

The movie was decent. Christian Bale seemed a little too young to be 33, or a little too emotional to be Jesus. The main thing that bothered me, though, was the emphasis on Mary as being perfect. She should be more emotional than Jesus. She should not always have this great perspective about why he does or says things. In the Bible, she doesn't say much at all. It is wrong to give her all these lines that make her out to be something the Bible never implies that she is: perfect.The only person who was ever without sin is Jesus. I think it would be much more interesting if someone made a movie in which they tried to show the difference between the perfect and imperfect by showing Mary as a fallen being and her son as perfect.How great would it be to see Jesus honoring his father and mother who could not fully comprehend his wisdom? I think Mel Gibson watched this movie before he made his, because the relationship between Mary and Jesus is very similar in The Passion Of The Christ, as well.

This film is incredible in its awfulness!! I am watching it still as I type. Whatever possessed the actors to take part in it? I guess they never know how it will turn out until it is edited and, what the hell, it's work!! It is badly written, badly dubbed and the fictional scenes just never ring true.It is a sanitised version of Nazareth we see in the early scenes and it is hard to believe that he people would have gone around in pristine clothing the whole time!! There is no hint of their ethnicity and it is like watching a school production with studio production values. Rather clichéd scenes just make the viewer laugh and although I have only got as far as the manger scene I cannot wait to see what Christian Bale does with his part as Jesus. I will watch it until the end but I cannot see how it can improve from such a weak start.

This TV-movie is well-intentioned but mechanical. I knew from the opening that there was a problem with the production when the opening narrative was printed on the screen and read at the same time with a voice that sounded like the station-break announcer.The film just goes through the motions and gives us every cliche of second-rate Biblical movies including Jesus as a fair-skinned Anglo-Saxon. Christian Bale does what he can with the material but is terribly mis-cast. His mother is presented as a politically-correct feminist who apparently is responsible for Jesus' teachings and parables which were, according to the plot, the bedtime stories she told Jesus when he was a child.The sets and costumes are good, but the performances are flat and perfunctory. What we get here is a shallowness reminiscent of school plays. The Gospels are condensed into a 2 hour TV movie that has the profundity of a Readers' Digest version of the Bible.