Noah Movie Review!!!

Noah's Ark is here in all its modern CGI glory, but does this ship sink or swim??? Read our review to find out!!!

So this movie seems to be getting a fair amount of flack from religious types around the world because perhaps it differs from the story they claim but cannot prove is real.

I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t read the bible and all I really knew about Noah’s Ark is summed up in this nice Disney cartoon I used to watch as a kid:

I was kinda expecting an old world 2012 type movie but that’s not really what we have here at all.  The first thing we are greeted with is a slide informing us that this is an accurate depiction of events as described in the bible.  Straight off the bat the tone is set and it ain’t a happy one. 

I thought Noah’s story was set around the same time as Jesus, boy was I wrong. 

Let me give you a biblical timeline and outline of the original story before we delve into the movie. 

Adam and Eve were the first two people on earth.  They had their first two sons, Cain and Abel, in the year 4004BC (4004 years before Christ)! That’s ages ago!!!  Cain killed his brother Abel and his bloodline developed into an evil sinful line of people spreading wickedness around the world.  Adam and Eve had another son, Seth from which another line of people developed – including Noah who was born in 3000BC. 

Reaching something of a boiling point as mankind was seemingly lost to sin and evil, the big guy upstairs decides to cool things down with a great flood in 2350BC, wiping the slate clean and allowing life to start anew.  He instructs Noah to build an ark in which to save 2 of every animal.  

Noah is also able to save his family in the ark and then try to repopulate the world after the floods.  Noah somehow lived to be like a thousand years old, so this gave him and his sons as well as their baby factory wives a fair amount of time to repopulate the world – yes that means that brothers and sisters were probably sleeping with each other??

Anyhow, so that’s the very basic idea of what supposedly happened. So how does the movie stack up?  Well, the movie doesn’t quite follow the above story, so don’t worry I haven’t spoiled things for you guys. 

How much you enjoy this centers around how much you can believe what’s going on.  I would have preferred this to have been a straight up natural disaster movie rather than have all the religious overtones.  I even prefer the Disney version in the video above to be honest.  I know, I know, this is meant to be all serious and all but in the absence of characters to really root for it’s hard to care about what’s going on. 

I still wanted to see the animals go into the ark two by two but that never happens and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was an alternative way to deal with things rather then just kill everyone in the flood, men, women, children, everyone. 

The special effects are good but I was really hoping the main flood sequence was longer and more of spectacle as it’s over all too soon.  It never really feels like a world ending event but more a forest flood leading into the sea.  The remainder of the film is then rather dull in the gloomy, dark, close quarters of the ark.

I wanted to enjoy this movie, I mean who didn’t enjoy the story of Noah’s Ark as a kid, but now as an adult the premise requires perhaps a certain amount of ‘faith’ without which things don’t make much sense and this leads you to question the actions of the so called ‘creator’.  Even Noah himself seems like a crazed religious extremist at times in this telling of the story.

It’s worth watching if you’ve already seen everything else that’s playing at the cinema right now.  Anthony Hopkins is great as always and is probably the best thing in this movie as Methuselah, but a great film this isn’t.  Perhaps that’s why it’s been banned in so many countries??

Approach with caution.

Rating 2.5 out of 5

Bobby