Christian Critique: The Star

Well, that was a massive disappointment.

Bo (Steven Yeun) wants to do something important with his life like joining the Royal Caravan, but God has a bigger plan in store for him: Being the Donkey that Mary rides to Bethlehem and the hero who’s behind saving Jesus from a really early demise. Yes. that’s the plot. Somebody, please cringe with me.

Christians suck at making faith-based movies. So does Hollywood. Christians not making good faith-based movies is disappointing. Hollywood not making good faith-based movies is disappointing, but expected and predictable. I wanted this to be good. I wanted it to be great. It was neither.
There are major Biblical inaccuracies:

1. John is already born and in attendance at Mary and Joseph’s wedding
2. Mary tells Joseph about Jesus after they are married and is far along enough that she has a massive baby bump.
3. The Wise Men visit King Herod before Jesus is ever born, not two years after the fact. When Herod is informed of there being a new king, he sends a guard with two dogs to track Mary, Joseph, and Jesus down and put an end to this new Kindom before it ever has a chance to start. I wish I was joking.

This movie was like Bible fan fiction. Really bad Bible fanfiction. Written by people unfamiliar with the original source material. AKA THE BIBLE!! I don’t know if the writers are Christian or not. I’m hoping for the sake of the movie that they’re not. Because if they are, this is embarrassing. They don’t even mention Jesus by name until close to the end. He gets name-dropped twice. Other than that he’s referred to as the baby and God’s son. Considering it’s a Hollywood movie, I’m surprised they mentioned Jesus by name at all.
I liked that Joseph was played by Zachary Levi and that the movie showed both Mary and Joseph struggle with the idea of being responsible for Jesus. I thought that was realistic. But that’s all I liked. Other than that the movie was long, I got bored, and stared at my phone which I don’t usually do if I’m enjoying something. Read the Bible instead. It’s better. So much better.