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.
