Prince of the Nile: The Story of Moses

It may sound that this is coming from somebody who hates animation. Far from it, have said many times about loving animation of all styles, countries and decades regardless of budget or studios. Nor is there any bias against Burbank Animation Studios. Again, far from it, liked their output (or at least enough of it) when younger and some of it is still more than passable such as 'White Fang' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo' (then again, there is also some work of theirs that is weak at best).

'Prince of the Nile: The Story of Moses' just about misses being considered weak by me, but for me it fits in the nothing more than mediocre category. Nothing's done abominably as such, but nothing is outstanding, the best assets being decent. Burbank Animation Studios have done much worse than 'Prince of the Nile: The Story of Moses', particularly 'T4: The Trojan Dog', 'Hercules', 'The Little Mermaid', 'Anna and the King', 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'. Ranking it in their filmography though it is somewhere in the weaker half of it.

To me, good things were not many but they were there. It starts promisingly with a suitably stormy opening sequence, that despite being short does make an impact. The music is dynamic and has some atmosphere.

Moses has the right amount of nobility and likeability, without being bland. He is one of two who is the best voiced, the other being the booming voice of God.

However, the other characters and voices didn't do it for me. Found the voices for both Aaron and the Pharoah to be too over the top, especially the latter (whose voice made my ears bleed). Aaron also came over as annoying, his change towards Moses being too rushed on top of that to be believable. All the other characters are dull and are practically neglected.

A few nice backgrounds and atmospheric colours aside, too much of the animation is flat, static and done with little care. The script is similarly limp and can be very corny and at times childish, while the narration wasn't necessary. The story feels very rushed in terms of structure and how events happen (everything with the plagues has far too little time to breathe) but also had the dramatic intensity and excitement of a damp squib, the opening was the most powerful it got but emotionally everything else left me cold.

Summarising, mediocre and as unfair as it is to say this for a better telling of the Exodus watch the Dreamworks' brilliant 'The Prince of Egypt' instead. 4/10