Given the run away success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, it was almost a given that some major studio would try their luck with a movie about the birth of Christ. New Line Cinema has answered the call with The Nativity Story, a lethargic and strangely passionless telling of the well-known story that seems to lack any sense of life whatsoever. I'm sure Sunday School groups will flock to see this movie (It's rated PG, and shies away from much of the violence in the story, so parents need not worry about taking their kids along.), but the average movie goer will find very little to inspire them here. From its plodding pace to its cast who all seem rather uninterested in the story they're supposed to be telling, The Nativity Story will prove to be an endurance test to all but the most patient viewer.

When teenage villager Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes from Whale Rider) is visited by the Angel Gabriel (Alexander Siddig), and informed that she will give birth to the Son of God, she is faced with the difficult situation of how to explain it to her family. They have just arranged her to marry local man Joseph (Oscar Isaac), and she is required to remain "pure" and untouched until the day of their wedding. When Mary starts to show signs of pregnancy, rumors fly amongst her family and other villagers. Joseph is alarmed at first, but decides to stand by Mary's side when he is visited by Gabriel in a dream who calms his fears. The two embark on a long journey to the town of Bethlehem after the treacherous King Herod (Ciaran Hinds) orders a census that forces all the local villagers to return to their place of birth. The census is all part of a plan Herod is brewing in order to stop a prophecy from being fulfilled that speaks of a mesiah being born who will overthrow his rule. In another subplot, three wise men (Nadim Sawalha, Eriq Ebouaney and Stefan Kalipha) are following a star that they feel will lead them to the destined mesiah.

For what is supposed to be an uplifting and inspiring film that reminds us of the true meaning of the holiday season, The Nativity Story falls short in just about every aspect. Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown) films the entire story with a curious lack of interest. The story of Christ's birth is being told, but nobody's heart seems to be into it. Screenwriter Mike Rich (Radio) does not liven things up very much with his extremely dry and slow moving script. The characters are kept at a complete distance from the audience, and there never seems to be any tension in the story, even with King Herod trying to track the baby down, and murdering dozens of innocent youths in his quest to find the child spoken of in the prophecy. That's because either the movie completely shies away from any tension the story might bring, or it simply pretends it doesn't exist by cutting away from the danger for so long. A good part of the movie is made up simply of Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem, and the worst thing that ever happens is that Mary nearly drowns after the mule she's riding on is frightened by a snake, and throws her off into a body of water. She is rescued by Joseph less than a minute later, and then the movie goes right back into its comfortable routine of the characters making their way to their destination so slowly you'd think they had invisible lead weights tied to their legs. Even when the film reaches the point that the entire story has been building up to, and the Baby Jesus is born, it does not connect with us in any way, due to the bizarre stone-faced reaction of the adult cast who surround the child. They could have replaced the cast with some of those light up nativity scene figures you find on front lawns of peoples' homes every Christmas, and you'd get the same level of performance that these flesh and blood actors give.

The movie does try to liven things up by making the three wise men the comedy relief. Yes, you heard me right, the story interrupts the journey of Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem with routine comedy sequences that seem somewhat out of place and forced. They comically bicker amongst themselves about which way they're going, and other things. Does the story of the birth of Christ really need comic relief? To be fair, the characters are taken seriously in some of their scenes, but when the movie cuts away simply to display their antics, it screams out in desperation that Mike Rich needed something to pad out his screenplay in order to fill a 100 minute running time. The entire script seems padded, as so many scenes have little if anything to do with the story at hand. And outside subplots, such as King Herod's search for the child or Mary's cousin Elizabeth (Shohreh Aghdashloo) going through her own miracle birth as she brings John the Baptist into the world, are so underwritten and underdeveloped that they almost seem to be afterthoughts. These plots do play a role in the story, but they and the characters that inhabit them are not developed in any satisfying way. Oddly enough, The Nativity Story comes across as if it is not even all that interested in telling its own story. We feel like we are simply getting bits and pieces of the least satisfying parts of the story.

Much like everything else in the film, the cast seems oddly uninterested and uninvolved, which really makes it hard to care about anything that's going on. As Mary, 16-year old Keisha Castle-Hughes shows none of the potential she displayed in her Oscar nominated performance in Whale Rider. She is severely stiff, seems to switch back and forth between two or three facial expressions, and spends a lot of scenes with her head hung down or looking at her feet. Oscar Isaac holds up a little bit better as Joseph, as he is at least able to display a wider range of emotions in his performance. But he still holds very little if any chemistry with his female co-star. Also surprising is the dull performance by the usually reliable Shohreh Aghdashloo, who was so memorable a couple years ago in House of Sand and Fog, but here seems as if she's having a hard time mustering up emotion with her underwritten role. As the three wise men, the actors possess neither the comic timing nor the sense of importance in their journey to make the characters work the way they are written. They simply come across as a distraction, rather than an actual part of the story.

The Nativity Story means well, but for all of its good intentions, it simply must be said that it hasn't been put together very well. There is no feeling, and there is very little reason to care about what you are watching up there on the screen. With so many awful Christmas movies preaching about commercialism and Santa Claus, it's nice that someone tried to do a movie tied into the true reason of the holiday. This is just the wrong way to do it. By the time it's over, we feel unfulfilled rather than inspired. For a religious epic movie like The Nativity Story, that's about the worst criticism you can give.

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