THE PRINCE OF EGYPT: Blu-ray (Dreamworks, 1998) Universal Home Video

When it was released just before Christmas 1998, Dreamworks' The Prince of Egypt (1998), co-directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hichner and Simon Wells, was rather erroneously described by one critic as the sort of movie Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) would like to have been when it grew up; a ridiculous accolade. Let us simply state, as though it were needed, that DeMille’s epic, superbly scripted and expertly played, will likely never be topped for sheer spectacle, performances or pageantry – period! And although 'Prince' follows the general trajectory of this time-honored tale of the exodus, the animated feature concocted for Dreamworks owes a lot more to the razzamatazz Broadway show-tune-inspired heritage of Disney's Aladdin (1992) than The Ten Commandments. Assembling a prestigious roster of voice talent, including Val Kilmer (Moses), Ralph Fiennes (Ramesses II), Michelle Pfeiffer (Tzipporah), Sandra Bullock (Miriam), Jeff Goldblum (Aaron), Danny Glover (Jethro), Patrick Stewart (Pharaoh Seti), Helen Mirren (Queen Tuya), Steve Martin (Hotep), and, Martin Short (Huy) to add star-girth to its otherwise somewhat undernourished animation, The Prince of Egypt takes many artistic liberties with the original story. Herein, Moses and Ramesses are not bitter rivals, but devoted brethren, playfully competitive until Moses discovers he is the son of Hebrew slaves.  Sidestepping the bacchanal that angered God and caused the liberated to wander aimlessly in the desert until all who had partaken of its wanton revelry died out, and also, rather bizarrely skirting Seti’s motivation for the gruesome slaughter of every Hebrew first-born (I get it, the producers are going for a kid-friendly PG-rating), The Prince of Egypt is a rather emasculated Coles’ Notes version of the Bible, with more fiction than fact and some toe-tapping tunes to recommend it.

Stephen Schwartz’s score is skillfully used to move the story along, mostly in montage. Hence, the opening number, ‘Deliver Us’ takes us through the Hebrew’s bondage as they build Seti’s treasure trove and palaces on their blood-stained backs of industry and labor. The ‘River Lullaby’ illustrates the parallel aspirations for baby Moses’ prosperity, expressed first by his real mother, Jochebed (Ofra Haza), and later, as adopted by the Queen. ‘All I Ever Wanted’ serves as an introspective bridge as Moses contemplates his future after discovering the truth of his own heritage, while ‘Through Heaven’s Eyes’ crosses the chasm from this moment of self-doubt Moses suffers when first welcomed into Jethro’s tent, through to his marriage to Tzipporah and return to Egypt as the liberator. This leaves ‘Playing with the Big Boys’ as the only anomaly, a camp ‘spectacle’ piece, delaying the plot as Hotep and Huy stage their rebuttal in magical incantations to Moses’ transforming his staff into a venomous cobra. Arguably, the most stirring number remains ‘When You Believe’ – the Oscar-winning song that takes us from the moment of exodus, through to the parting of the Red Sea, still the most impressive moment in the picture. If only more of The Prince of Egypt had lived up to this inspirational finale, the movie might have remained a classic.

By 1998, the successful resurrection of the Walt Disney Studio’s animation department and its renaissance of ‘new’ classics, begun a decade earlier with The Little Mermaid, had spurred virtually every studio in Hollywood to enter the competition. Warner Bros., Dreamworks, Fox, Universal, et al tried, mostly in vain, to keep up with the Jones. Virtually none, except veteran animator and Disney ex-pat, Don Bluth’s brief flourish over at 2oth Century-Fox lived up to Walt’s legacy, producing two visually breathtaking masterpieces (Anastasia, 1997 and Titan A.E., 2000) that continue to hold up spectacularly. For the rest, the results ranked more among the top-tier accomplishments of Saturday morning television programming, than any real artistic merit to endure beyond the snatch and grab to capitalize on the sudden fascination with big-screen animation. Despite its lengthy 4-year gestation, The Prince of Egypt is a fairly pedestrian movie, its animated style rather loose, its depiction of the central figures, highly stylized in an attempt to mask a curious inability to actually create any realistic representation of the human form. Oh, what a skilled craftsman like Marc Davis, in his prime, might have done with such material. Aside: Tzipporah, rather uncannily, looks like a cropped-hair, leggy, stock company version of the gypsy gal, Esmerelda from Disney’s superior crafted, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). 

As a way to get kids of an impressionable age interested in the stories from The Bible, The Prince of Egypt has its place, I suppose, although, parents ought to be cautioned: Philip LaZebnik and Nicholas Meyer’s screenplay is only superficially devoted to its source material. The picture hits the main plot points, but jettisons so much backstory, we really only get a thumbnail of the past, with a lot of bright happy images and cute, disposable songs to lull us into complacency for the truth. This isn’t religion, folks. It’s a pop-u-tainment masked as a faux history lesson. The Prince of Egypt began its gestation when ex-Disney chairman, Jeffrey Katzenberg elected to launch an animation department at Dreamworks, the studio he co-founded with Steven Spielberg and David Geffin. It was Spielberg’s suggestion to ‘remake’ The Ten Commandments – an idea immediately pounced upon as it not only was a story with built-in awareness, but leant immediate stature to Dreamworks’ aspirations to become a viable competitor to Disney Inc. Story Supervisors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook led a team of fourteen storyboard artists and writers, while Katzenberg applied input from Christian, Jewish and Muslim theologians, as well as Arab American leaders, to wend his way through a sort of watered-down authenticity, hopefully to offend no one. Art directors Kathy Altieri and Richard Chavez and Production Designer Darek Gogol poured over books devoted to the architectural style of Ancient Egypt and even took a two-week sojourn to Egypt to soak in the culture.  

Animation is a rare art form. Even when it fails to achieve its artistry, it requires an awe-inspiring discipline in investment of time, energies and money. The Prince of Egypt is not as accomplished as one would hope, but it does manage to create a distinction between the angular features of the Egyptians and more earthy Hebrew class. By production’s end, 934 hand-painted backgrounds had been created by a small army of 350 artists from 34 different nations – recruited from the Walt Disney Co. and Spielberg’s defunct Amblimation. Of the 1,192 individual scenes created for the movie, 1,180 are an amalgam of traditional hand-drawn animation and CGI imagery. Sadly, the results yield a far more generic quality to the art. Rendering the Hebrew exodus from Egypt and the plagues preceding it in a computer, we get a very homogenized gloss to both that really dumbs down our appreciation for the girth of each. Again, I pause a moment to remind the reader of DeMille’s live-action and full-scale recreation of these pivotal chapters from our story – never more perfectly realized on the screen since and likely to remain the exemplar for all time.  

This Prince of Egypt is a kinder, gentler incarnation than its predecessor; Moses’, previously set before us as a full-grown warrior with primal doubts, willed to life by larger-than-life Charlton Heston, is now rather anemically voiced by Val Kilmer as a more youthful and mischievous teenager in sandals and wig. Monumentally, this Moses is insecure. Again, I suspect the producers here are going for a more ‘kid-friendly’ martyr. Does it work? Hmmmm. Not entirely, as the transformation of this devil-may-care Egyptian regent into the divinely inspired liberator is more than a little awkward, even as he is confronted by the voice of God and the burning bush. God in the ’56 DeMille classic (also voiced by Heston) was authoritative. This God is the touchy/feely sort, coaxing Moses to remove his sandals on Holy Ground as a prerequisite to being taught the divine law. Also, unlike Heston’s Moses, altered twice and rapidly aged by his exposure to the All-Mighty, this Moses returns to his wife and family, still as youthful as before, and still with niggling concerns he is the wrong guy for the job. The Prince of Egypt’s modus operandi is presumably, and merely, to make this Moses the sort of not-altogether righteous young buck any child of an impressionable age would want to look up to as an elder brother. That may work for the kiddie sect, but it really hinters Moses’ credence as God’s emissary on earth for anyone over the age of puberty.  

Our story begins with a Lion King-esque (1994) prologue; the Hebrew bondage and Seti’s decree for the extermination of every Hebrew first born told in montage and song – a layering of multi-plane images passing in and out of some exquisitely rendered temples. We witness the baby Moses cast upon the waters by his mother and rescued from the rushes by the Egyptian queen, who claims the child as her own. This, in and of itself, is problematic since surely Seti would know whether or not his own wife was with child. Recall, that DeMille’s epic much more skillfully explains away this scenario as it is Seti’s sister, Bithiah having rescued Moses from the waters and claiming him as her gift from the Nile god, sent by a husband who dwells in the house of the dead, introduces too the later complication of her devoted, but bitter slave, Memnet, exposing the secret by revealing Moses’ birthright to his lover, Nefretiri, who again, despite her loyalty and love for the man, is powerless to prevent the truth from coming out. As The Prince of Egypt has neither the luxury of time nor DeMille’s cast of thousands to employ, virtually all of these machinations and characters are expunged from this retelling. But it is an over-simplification from which this movie never recovers.

Instead, we cut ahead some eighteen years into the future. Moses and Ramesses are now testosterone-driven young bucks, carelessly racing their chariots through the streets, demolishing the marketplace and destroying a temple in a tidal wave of sand. Seti is, of course, displeased with both ‘his’ sons, but more so with Ramesses, as one day his shoulders must bear the responsibilities of an empire. He therefore cannot be so easily swayed, not even in friendship or brotherhood. Late to his own ‘coming out’ party, Ramesses is bequeathed Tzipporah, a sultry slave girl who refuses to remain a prize won by the noble heir apparent. Moses playfully goads the girl, who takes a tumble into one of the fountains and is humiliated in public. Ramesses makes a present of Tzipporah to Moses. Alas, arriving at his bed chamber some hours later, Moses finds the servant responsible for her delivery to him has instead been bound and gagged and the girl, escaped. Witnessing Tzipporah making off with a camel, Moses deliberates distracts a pair of guards so she might leave from the palace undetected. Clearly, he is already enamored by her. Skulking off to pursue her, Moses is instead intercepted by his sister, Miriam and brother, Aaron. Miriam is outspoken and reveals Moses true heritage to him.

Unable to digest it as fact, Moses retreats to the palace and discovers Seti’s brutal edict – the slaughter of every Hebrew first born – depicted in hieroglyphics that momentarily come to life on a secluded temple wall. His identity destroyed, as is his faith in the man he called father, Moses retreats to the outskirts a broken man. Eventually, he stumbles upon the daughters of Jethro drawing water from their well. After rescuing the girls from a pair of peasant travelers attempting to monopolize the well, Moses takes a tumble down its hollow shaft and is almost left there by Tzipporah. Sometime later, Moses is introduced to Jethro, who instructs the boy to look at his life through heaven’s eyes. A brief montage later, Moses and Tzipporah are wed, time passes, and Moses encounters ‘the burning bush’. God instructs Moses to return to Egypt and free His people. Reluctantly, and rather insecurely, Moses and Tzipporah go back to Seti’s temple. They find Ramesses is now the pharaoh. At first elated at Moses’ return, this brotherly bond crumbles when Moses demands Ramesses free the slaves.

Through God’s wonders, Moses turns his staff into a serpent – a miracle dismissed by Ramesses as a cheap magician’s trick when his two priests, Hotep and Huy manage an even grander series of visions to dim the awe of Moses’ snake. Undaunted, Moses turns the Nile red, and then proceeds to set upon Egypt all manner of plagues: boils, pestilence, locust, frogs, toxic hail, etc. Still, Ramesses is unmoved. Taking a tip from his late father, Ramesses decides every Hebrew first born in Egypt shall die – a decree to set the wrath of God upon the city. God instructs Moses to cover the entrances in lambs’ blood to all the homes to be spared. God’s wrath descends, claiming the lives of many Egyptians who have not taken the plague seriously. Ramesses only son is among its victims. Defeated, Ramesses allows the Hebrew exodus to occur. Moses leads the chosen to the Red Sea. Only Ramesses has had a change of heart yet again. He arrives with his charioteers, planning to slaughter the Hebrews. But God bars the Egyptians with a pillar of fire, even as He parts the raging waters, allowing the Hebrews their escape to the other side. Afterward, God’s wrath drowns Ramesses’ armies in the flood. We fast track to Moses, suddenly appearing amidst the people, carrying stone tablets on which God’s laws to mankind have been etched.

The Prince of Egypt takes so many artistic liberties with the exodus tale it really is little more than a footnote to that story, still best recalled in DeMille’s 1956 epic. Understanding, of course, the limitations of time prevent a more thorough retelling herein, The Prince of Egypt wastes a lot of its 99 minutes on humbug instead of history – the buddy/buddy setup of Moses and Ramesses’ youth, and, the worst transgressor, Hotep and Huy’s ‘Playing with the Big Boys’ – a stagy spectacle, conjuring all manner of vaporous beasts and bunk. We lose too much back story in service to these cheaply flashy moments and the misguided pretext Ramesses and Moses began as brothers on equal footing. Actually, Moses and Ramesses were adversaries and rivals for Seti’s affections, the love of pharaoh’s daughter – to become queen by marriage – and competitors for the throne of Egypt. Again, the target audience for The Prince of Egypt is children, not adults. But how effective are the lessons of The Bible if the kiddies are openly lied to or, at the very least, spoon-fed a colorful cartoonish mythology in place of religion?

The Prince of Egypt arrives on Blu-ray in a rather disappointing 1080p transfer. I suspect this image harvest is derived from an older scan as it stubbornly refuses to pop as it should. Colors are muted instead of rich and vibrant. While age-related artifacts are limited to a few fleeting nicks and chips, overall image clarity is compromised. Visuals are frequently soft and blurry. Contrast is weak too. Everything falls into a sort of mid-register; blacks looking milky instead of deep and enveloping. Observed in a completely darkened room, the eye eventually settles in to this dimness. But frankly, this is an uninspiring visual presentation, further marred by some ugly edge effects during Moses discovery of Seti’s slaughter of the Hebrew firstborns. As the hieroglyphic warriors come to life to recall the brutality for Moses, we get some horrendous aliasing. The audio is 5.1 DTS and yet, not altogether as aggressive as one might anticipate. Indeed, like the visuals, there is nothing outstanding here; dialogue, front and center, a few SFX spread across all channels with timidity rather than bombast. Stephen Schwartz’s score lacks the visceral oomph in spatial separation. Extras are derived from archival ‘making of’ junkets and an audio commentary. These cover virtually all aspects of the movie’s creation and will surely not disappoint. Bottom line: The Prince of Egypt was a huge hit for Dreamworks in 1998. But it does not hold up nearly as well today. The Blu-ray is definitely not up to snuff; its 1080p transfer as uninspired as Universal’s pathetic cover art. Regrets.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

4.5