REVIEWS

"THE PRINCE OF EGYPT"

Everyone is doing their best to dethrone Disney as King of Animation. 20th Century Fox impressed quite a few people with "Anastasia," but only now has a studio come out with an animated film that is right up there with Disney animation, and not surprisingly, it's from Dreamworks SKG. Not only is it's animation department run by the guy who ran Disney's animation, but they've been giving it a Disney-like promotion for months (except, if I'm not mistaken, there won't be any action figures). After seeing it this past weekend, I can say for certain that Dreamworks is gonna scare Disney. Scare them BIG time. This is a good thing because they'll both work towards trying to beat the other, meaning even better animation over the next few years.

By the way, a few minutes before the beginning of "The Prince of Egypt," I saw the movie trailer for "The King and I," a new animated film that's coming out soon. It looked terrible. Why do these studios even bother? The animation looked like something out of the 1970s! These people need to realize that audiences are much more sophisticated than they think, and animation is on a whole new level. I think that studios are rushing cheaply made animated films thinking that it'll make SOME money just because it's animated. If "The King and I" grosses more than $15 million, I'll be shocked.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah. "The Prince of Egypt" was great. I'm not a religious person at all, but this movie helped me to have a new respect for religious stories. And I discovered something: Do NOT piss off God! He can cause quite a bit of damage when he's upset.

"The Prince of Egypt" was directed by Brenda Chapman (she was the story supervisor in "The Lion King") and Steve Hickner (producer of "Balto" and "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story"), and this is the directorial debut for the both of them. As for the story, it was written by Philip LaZebnik (though uncredited, he helped to write "Mulan" and "Pocahontas") and based on "The Book of Exodus" in the "Holy Bible." The voices are provided by some huge names in Hollywood, such as Val Kilmer (as "Moses"), Ralph Fiennes (as "Ramses"), Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren and others, including America's favorite jailbait, Natalie Portman. Comic relief was provided by Steve Martin and Martin Short (and though it's not their fault, their characters were annoying and very unnecessary).

Though I heard the opposite from some, I liked the storyline a lot, but I'm unfamiliar with the story of which it's based, so it's like a new tale to me. The animation was simply incredible. Key things to look out for: Moses' dream sequence and everything in the last fifteen minutes of the movie. It's gonna be REALLY interesting to see what this new rivalry will do for animated films.

Scale of 1-10: 9