The Gospel of Judah

The Lion of Judah

2011

D: Deryck Broom, Roger Hawkins

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Pros: Potentially Good Premise, Some Good Ideas and Character Arcs, One Funny Moment

Cons: Animation and Character Designs, Obnoxious Humor, Inconsistent Tone

       Today is Good Friday.  A solemn day when we commemorate Christ’s sacrifice to save us all from sin and death.  God lowered himself to our level and consented to excruciating torment on the cross because of His love for us.  So, being the good Catholic boy I am, I’m naturally taking the opportunity to review The Lion of Judah.  And to think a year ago I took the time to draw this.

       The movie begins in Jesus’ time in a barn which serves as the home for goofy pig named Horace (Omar Benson Miller), a similarly goofy rooster named Drake (Alphonso McCauley), a skittish horse named Monty (Anupam Kher), a sassy and matronly cow named Esmay (Sandi Patty) and a rat named Slink (Ernest Borgnine).  The scene mostly consists of aimless slapstick and humor.  I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but I think this is where the movie gets its obligatory fart joke out of the way.  This seems to be mandatory in all 3D anthropomorphic animated movies.  The plot begins when a crate carrying a lamb named Judah (Georgina Cordova) ends up delivered to the barn.  Judah calls himself “The Lion of Judah” and is convinced that he is destined to save the other animals from ritualistic sacrifice.  This was most likely a comforting lie told to him by his mother, as he is being shipped to Jerusalem to be sacrificed himself.  After some more nonsense, he is packed back into his crate, but Drake is put in with him by accident.  The other animals decide to make the trip to rescue them.

       At this point I would like to complain about the movie’s animation.  I’ve pointed this out before, but I think one of the reasons why characters in these cheap 3D animated movies look so off-putting is that no one thinks to adapt conceptual artwork that looked good on paper to a three dimensional medium.  As if to drive the point home, Lion of Judah’s credits feature some decent drawings of the characters.  It’s almost like it’s teasing us with the prospect that this movie would actually look presentable if it was traditionally animated.  Another problem is that they didn’t quite know how to design the animals.  They have an awkward mix of animal and human features, but the humans in the movie look okay.  The most grotesque example of all this is Horace.  One might notice that he has a creepy grin stretched across an oddly flat, wide face, and inside that grin is set of human jaws to narrow to fill the mouth.  I noticed something similar with Vlad Chocool in Foodfight!     

       The characters pick up a reluctant donkey named Jack (Scott Eastwood).  Jack is a cynical character who has been used by the humans and wants nothing to do with this trek.  Eventually he meets Jesus (Bruce Marchiano) and becomes the ass that He rides during Palm Sunday.  Touched by Christ’s love, he decides to follow Him in the end.  Predictable as it is, this is one of the more complete and well-executed story arcs in the movie.  It also helps that Jack’s is one of the more well-rendered designs in the movie.

       When they finally arrive in Jerusalem, Judah unsuccessfully attempts to free the animals.  A clever idea thrown in here is the presence of two pious doves who are willingly going to their sacrifice and are not interested in liberation.  We see another admittedly clever idea with a group of ravens led by Boss (Michael Madsen).  Labeled as “unclean” by society, they search for rags to clean themselves because they’ve misinterpreted a prophecy of some kind.  At one point Monty finds himself in an alley claimed by the ravens, and the result is a scene that is actually genuinely funny.  It’s the only funny moment in the movie.  Unfortunately, these birds all have stereotypical Italian gangster accents. 

      In classic Ben-Hur fashion, the animals have some momentary encounters with Jesus.  For example, a character is loosed from a cage when He harangues the money lenders.  In a particularly annoying scene, Drake is acting out a lame comic sequence that plays out like a typical Mission Impossible spoof.  This culminates in his running into a crowd screaming like an idiot…right when Peter (David Magidoff) has denied Jesus the third time.  Casting Drake as the Biblical cock might have been a clever idea, but the awkward use of humor makes the scene annoying and borderline offensive.   Eventually, the protagonists gather to witness the Crucifixion, and they are clearly heartbroken by the sight.  No one seems to question the group of farm animals that have positioned themselves front and center.  Fortunately, they are cheered up by the Resurrection and return home while Jack leaves them to follow Christ.  Judah is reunited with his mother, which is heartwarming if you ignore that their owner, unlikely to convert anytime soon, will probably just shrug and send him to Jerusalem again.  Or just eat him. 

      The idea of an anthropomorphic film about the Passion makes some sort of sense when you consider that Christ’s sacrifice rendered animal sacrifice unnecessary.  However, this ignores the fact that Christianity also did away with many food taboos.

This is bad news for Horace in particular.

Still, this movie’s premise had a lot of potential, and the film mostly suffers from poor execution.  The animation is grotesque, and the Nickelodeon-style humor is annoying and inappropriate.  When combined with the serious story elements, it causes problems with inconsistent tone.  It’s a common mistake with these movies to assume that children will be bored unless you throw goofy humor at them at an almost constant rate.  Children may be naïve in many ways, but they generally have a basic understanding of good narrative and have a better ability to discern a good movie from a bad one than people give them credit for.  They actually do appreciate earnestness in fiction.    I would have liked to see this story attempted by Don Bluth during the 80’s.  Still, their hearts were in the right place, and the movie does have the occasional moment of decent symbolism.  For what it’s worth, that makes Lion of Judah a better Biblical movie than Noah.