Review of The Prince of Egypt (1998) by Kathleen M — 07 Feb 2010

I find it quite ironic that this film managed to compell me. After all, I'm very much an atheist! Up until recently of course, I hadn't seen this film since I was a kid around the time it came out. I spent years not watching this movie, mainly because it brought back unhappy memories of a stupid and really conservative Christian school that I used to go to. Well, I watched this movie again for the first time in years and by God, it's actually good.

The story is solid, the characters are three dimensional, the cinematography is great and most of all, the score and musical numbers (apart from Playing With The Big Boys and a couple of others) were epic. Stephen Schwartz did the songs for this movie and he was also the composer who did the songs for Wicked and the lyrics in Enchanted. (Hint, hint Disney. If you're not going to get Alan Menken to do your music, get Stephen Schwartz, not Randy Newman!) Hans Zimmer also did the score and he is slowly becoming one of my favourite film composers, after doing scores like Pirates of The Caribbean and the Lion King.

The film also didn't dumb the audience down like other kids' films do, especially when it came to the" show, don't tell" rule. There was one part which showed Moses being shocked by a picture of Hebrew babies being eaten by crocodiles, and the Pharaoh explains that the Hebrews were out-numbered and would've fought back. That part actually scared me when I was a kid and even now, I still find it quite disturbing. That is a pretty big deal!

In general, The Prince of Egypt has a surprising amount of depth that many kids' films lack and it's really quite under-rated. I guess if non-religious people like me can be affected by it, then the film has got to be doing something right!