Before I get to the really good stuff, let me start of by briefly addressing the supporting cast first. Now a thing with this film is that all the voices in the film are celebrity voices, really recognizable ones at that too, but so I will not repeat myself throughout the review is that they do their acting so good for their roles, you still get sucked into the characters as well as the performances, even if the voices are recognizable. We have the Pharaoh played by Patrick Stewart who is very good at being sinister. He isn't over the top but he isn't downplayed either. Even at times when he's not yelling, ordering, and instead trying to be calm and welcoming there is still a sense of villainy and tyranny in him that is always present. The Egyptian high priests played by Steve Martin and Martin Short I will admit are a little out of place and over the top to be included in a tale that focuses mostly on drama. It's obvious they are put in their for the comic relief for kids and since it is an animated film. But for me personally they get a laugh here and there, plus they have an AWESOME song number which I will get to later. Jeff Goldblum and Sandra Bullock also do well as Aaaron and Miriam. Aaron does seem to come across as having that similar kind of Jeff Goldblum character he always plays, but the good thing is even though the performance is recognizable it does actually help by making the character fresh and the actor's own unique performance. Sandra Bullock plays Miriam loving and supportive, and that's really what the character is, which is not a bad trait to have. She does have good moments and is developed enough for the audience to actually care for her. Then we have Moses' wife Tzipporah, played by Michelle Pfieffer. The character starts off not liking Moses due their first encounter in Egypt, but when Moses gets to Miridian he starts to learn more about her just as the audience gets to learn more about her, and eventually we can actually open up to her. Her relationship with Moses is pretty much how the audience feels towards her, starts out rough but sooner than later she becomes a likeable addition to cast. Finally we come to the two main leads and the heart of the story; the hero Moses, played by Val Kilmer, and the tragic villain Pharaoh Ramses, played by Ralph Fiennes. Moses starts out as sort of a rambunctious youth who enjoys life, and it incredibly shows in earlier scenes with him playing with his foster brother Ramses and working off with his foster family. You can tell he loves his life. But as soon as reality hits him and his true past is revealed, we can feel the pain he goes through as the wonderful life he had now seemed to be all a lie to him. But we feel glad for him when he chooses a new life, which in turn helps us stay on his side when he is called on his duty to free the slaves. Val Kilmer's performance and the overall development of the character throughout makes us believe that he is truly worthy of greatness. But this does not mean that our villain Ramses is ignored. Probably my favorite character in the entire film, Ramses is a great, great, GREAT villain! He isn't really sinister, diabolical, evil, demented, manipulative, or a lack of a better word villainous, his only goal is the opposite goal of our main protagonist, which still makes him an antangonist. But on top of that we can even feel the pressure he has to be Pharaoh and according to one of the earliest scenes where his father heavily scolds him on his mistakes, Ramses will not let anything or anyone, even his own brother, stop his way in becoming a great king even to the point of surpassing his father. Also not only his the charatcer written by screenwriting gods, but just the amount of emotion and tragedy that Fiennes puts into this performance just ultimately sells it, making Ramses one of my favorite characters in film, if not one of my favorite villains!
For being the first traditionally animated feature length film Dreamworks has ever done, it is DAMN impressive! This ain't no test run folks, the animation is beautiful, beautiful, BEAUTIFUL! I know I am just using exclamations to describe the beauty of it but to be honest, it is the only way I can express it. You can tell a lot of hard work and talent was put into it. Not only is the traditional animation beautiful, but some of the scenes where they have to mix in CG are also a wondrous sight to behold. Examples of this are the Burning Bush scene and of course the parting of the Red Sea. The animation not only greatly helps the character designs, but it also does tremendous work for the backgrounds and giving the film a huge scope making it seem very epic. The shots and camera angles help make this film and the landscapes within it enormous and they are! The animation can definitely count as one of the reasons to check this film out.
There is also the music, sweet heavens what can I say about the music. It is sad that when it comes to terms of musical films this film is not looked at enough, if not at all. It's sad because not only do I think The Prince of Egypt is one of the best animated musicals, I think it is one of the best musical films, period! The songs are written by Stephen Schwartz whose other film credits include for Disney Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and he also written the Tony Award-winning Broadway stage musical Wicked. Not only are the melodies for these songs easy to remember but the lyrics are written as well as the film's screenplay, fluent, powerful, and deep. The songs are as close to perfection as any song in a musical can get. The opening "Deliver Us", sung by the ensemble and Moses' mother, is one of the greatest musical openings ever written. It's moving, powerful, heartbreaking, and epic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kr4aCUYg8A). "All I've Ever Wanted", sung by Moses, is all the epic you need in a story and scope that's fitting to it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVmtG9_55F0). "Look Through Heaven's Eyes", performed by Jethro, is uplifting, moving, thoughtful as well as again epic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG0a9WFkgzU). The awesome "Playing with the Big Boys Now" sung by high priests played by Steve Martin and Martin Short is sinister, catchy, dark, brooding, and again epic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxyOTFQFWQ0). "The Plauges", performed by Moses and Ramses, and my favorite song in the entire film, is just...GOOD GOD, just BEAUTIFUL, CONFLICTING, AND EPIC! The acting, the emotion, the animation, the drama, and the atmosphere is at a very high peak among others in the rest of the film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Nm0vf1W9Q). Then there is the theme "When You Believe", performed by Miriam, Tzipporah, and the ensemble which is beautiful, tear shedding, uplifiting, emotional, and of course, say it with me now...epic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gur8ccqrQ9c). What's the word that kept popping up throughout the section of this review? Oh yeah...epic! The epic in these songs can only be brought up by one man, Hans Zimmer, who composed the score for the film and the songs. Zimmer is my all time favorite film composer and here he proves he can definitely do no wrong. But not only are the scores for the songs wonderful but the score itself is wonderful and of course epic. Especially the scenes with the Burning Bush and the Red Sea parting, the moving and uplifting instrumental score add to the beauty of those scenes along with their animation. Schwartz and Zimmer showed that they can make a dynamic musical team. Need proof...PRINCE OF EGYPT!
It is beyond words how incredible the story is written. Of course the story a lot of us know, it's taken from the Book of Exodus in the Bible. But the way they present it is still very original. The focus is not as much as it is with Moses' struggle to get the Jews out of Egypt, as much as it does with Moses and Ramses' relationship and how it is tragically tearing apart. Oh yes there are scenes that deal with God, faith, the fate of Jewish slaves and all that stuff which are done really well too. But the center and main focus is the brotherhood between the two leads and how it hangs on the balance. Though Moses is the obvious hero who wants to the right thing and the most humane thing, because God himself told him to do so, let's put ourselves in Ramses shoes for a bit. Now this is a brother that has grown up with Ramses his whole life, until a fateful day where the brother makes a terrible accident which causes him to run away. Ramses does not see his brother in years and during that time he finally has become Pharaoh. That is until another fateful day, the beloved brother Moses unexpectedly returns after many years returning with a wife and everything. Despite Ramses desperately wanting to clear his brother's name of the crime he committed years back, wanting to catch up after all these, and just overall wanting to enjoy the glorious company and brotherhood he had missed so much, it turns out Moses has only come to ask that Ramses let the slaves go. Knowing this would bring shame to the legacy of his empire,and on top of that putting shame to his father, he is pressured into not doing as Moses commands and his angered that his own brother would challenge him to do something so risky. And if Ramses continues to reject Moses and God's commands they must be enemies and God must unleash his wrath on Egypt, which will all come back to Ramses. This is where amazing storytelling and amazing conflict lives. It's complex, thought provoking, engaging, direct, fluent, and three dimensional. The film puts an appropriate modern twist to this classic story and it works tremendously because now these people seem more real and identifiable than we can ever imagined. That's what Prince of Egypt did. It took a fairly well known story that people can probably recite in their sleep and made it their own and made it unique making it, in my opinion, the BEST Exodus adaptation, even better than Cecil B. DeMille's own Ten Commandments. It gave us an awesome story, with awesome twists, awesome characters, awesome music, and of course awesome animation. My favorite overall film from the animation department of Dreamworks, The Prince of Egypt is one of those perfect films that deserves to be watched and glorified again and again!
GRADE: E
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