If you feel the need to watch a faith film, you could do far, far worse than this one, a decently staged musical treatment of the nativity that feels like a Christian version of a live action Disney movie. Mary (Fiona Palomo) is a heroine in the mould of Belle from Beauty and the Beast or Jasmine from Aladdin: bookish and dreaming of a world in which she gets to make her own life decisions, instead of being married off to some guy called Joseph (Milo Manheim) whom she’s never met. Luckily, he turns out to be quite puckish and hunky (also in the Aladdin vein), while your comic relief type characters take the form of the Three Wise Men.
As in Disney, however, it’s the villain who is really memorable. Antonio Banderas can’t decide between stealing his scenes and chewing the scenery, so opts for both as evil King Herod, here costumed to evoke the devil in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The old adage about the devil having the best tunes is also borne out, with the three perkiest musical numbers going respectively to Herod, Herod’s son (Joel Smallbone), and a fun double-role number for Manheim, embodying Joseph’s faithful and suspicious sides, as he tries to figure out whether or not to believe his pregnant fiancee’s story about an immaculate conception.
It’s a shame that the film overall can’t live up to these high points. There are too many forgettable ballads, and once Mary is pregnant, she doesn’t get all that much to do. Herod’s narrative peters out as well. Arguably, these are problems embedded in the source material; the gospels are hardly renowned for sharp characterisation or satisfying individual narrative arcs. Still, time and effort has been spent on the film-making craft here, despite a relatively modest budget, with an appealingly lively colour palette and some decent location work giving the whole thing a semblance of reality that is only occasionally undermined by dubious FX work. The choreography in particular outstrips that of another famous musical based around a big paternity mystery – Mamma Mia.
• Journey to Bethlehem is released on 17 November in UK and Irish cinemas, and on 30 November in Australian cinemas.
