Susan Granger’s review of “The Nativity Story” (New Line Cinema)
With blatant commercialism dominating December’s holiday season, this Biblical story revives the traditional Christmas spirit – like a glossy, cinematic crche.
The story begins 2,000 years ago as King Herod (Ciaran Hinds) of Judea orders the slaughter of all male children under the age of two to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy that a new king has been born.
Previously, in Nazareth, a sulky, teenager, Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes), reluctantly betrothed to the carpenter Joseph (Oscar Isaac), is visited by Archangel Gabriel (Alexander Siddig), and told that the will bear the child of God.
“Why is it me God has asked? I am nothing,” she inquires, sincerely bewildered.
(In addition, Mary’s older cousin Elizabeth (Shohreh Aghdashloo) discovers that she’s also with child, a boy who becomes John the Baptist.)
Understandably, Mary’s pregnancy stuns her family and Joseph feels humiliated – until Gabriel confirms the purity of her immaculate conception. Then, in compliance with the Roman census, Mary and Joseph embark on the perilous, arduous trek to his hometown of Bethlehem, where Jesus is born in a manger.
Screenwriter Mike Rich (“The Rookie”) and director Catherine Hardwicke (“Lords of Dogtown”) follow the straightforward, one-dimensional tale of the birth, the arrival of three bickering maji – following not just a star but a planetary convergence – and the massacre of the innocents, returning the story back to where it began.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Nativity Story” is an earnest, reverent, respectful 5 – but banal and tediously conventional compared with George Stevens’ “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew.” And coincidentally, in real life, Keisha Castle-Hughes (“Whale Rider”) is a pregnant, unmarried 16 year-old – which has been capitalized on in the tabloids.
