KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * *
The movies are ill-equipped to tell hallowed stories: it's too hard to integrate audiences' ineffable longing for something transcendent with the rather tawdry quotidian detail of the subjects' real lives.
Just such a problem dogs, and finally sinks, this sincere and utterly unremarkable retelling of the Christmas story.
The incidents that are part of Western society's literary, symbological, imaginative and philosophical landscape have inspirational heft when rendered as a fresco cycle but look literal-minded and faintly silly on screen.
Watching everyone try very hard to do Middle Eastern accents, it's impossible not to think of Monty Python caricatures. You're waiting for Joseph to explode in pure Bronx: "All right already, so we'll sleep in the manger. Thanks for nothing."
Matters aren't helped by a dutiful script that mixes bits of the King James' version with lines that are paralysingly banal or make no sense.
When Mary enthuses to the unborn Jesus that his father "is a man who will always give of himself before anyone else" you get what she means but you're not entirely sure she does.
Castle-Hughes, the butt of too many virgin jokes of late, looks authentic in the big role, but her performance is almost entirely without affect. Playing the mother of God doesn't call for scenery-chewing, but a cardboard cutout might have worked as well.
In the end, this version of the nativity story is no worse than those in the picture books of my childhood. But neither is it better.
For every inspired touch - the beautiful score, the painstaking design, one of the constantly bickering magi who likes saying that he is wiser than the others - there is a cliche like Hinds' pantomime Herod, an angel Gabriel who looks like a disco queen and a cheesy star of Bethlehem that belongs in a museum diorama.
The faithful may exult in a film that is nothing if not earnest, but as a movie it has all the potency of a Christmas card.
Verdict: A dull version of the Christmas story that makes you long for the Monty Python caricatures
Cast: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, Ciaran Hinds
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Running time: 100 mins
Rating: PG, contains violence
Screening: Everywhere
