It's hard to know precisely where to begin. Last night, Beeki and I went to see One Night With the King, the new movie based on the Biblical book of Esther. It was, bar none, the worst movie I've seen since Alexander, and it was easily one of the five worst films I've ever seen. (I don't actually have a list, but if you forced me to make one, this would surely be in it.)

I went in with an open mind, prepared... well, at least hoping... to like it. I'm not the kind of person who goes to a movie rooting for it to suck. I will always look for the bright side. In other words, you really have to work to get a truly bad review out of me. Here goes:

The movie’s glaring weaknesses were apparent within the first five minutes: wretched script and dreadful directing. There are many movies that can overcome one or the other of these curses, but not both of them. The movie is purportedly the biblical tale of Esther. It begins with a good idea, but poor execution: it tries to set the stage for Esther by touching on how the Jews got to Persia. What happens next will continue to mar the film for the rest of its 2 hours and 3 minutes: the writer added material where none was needed, introduced superfluous characters, left plot lines hanging, and tried to treat his material with historicity where there is none.

The movie needed a good introduction. (And middle and end, but that's neither here nor there...) And this introduction tried to explain both the origins of Haman, the bad guy, and how the Jews got to Persia. Unfortunately, they concocted a scenario that began with Saul sparing Agag the Amalekite king from 1 Samuel 15. They borrowed from Jewish extra-Scriptural tradition a spared Amalekite queen who was pregnant with the ancestor of Haman. So after all that trouble, they set up Haman as the chief bad guy and then leave him on the periphery for half the movie while introducing countless other bad guys.

Who are these other bad guys? Well, the writer wasn't satisfied with the story as it is, so he injected political intrigue all throughout the movie. The movie was rife with scheming princes and advisors who were all trying to steer the king, Xerxes, either in or out of a war with the Greeks, who were supposed to have killed his father. The surface reason for this would appear to be plumping up the plot. But the biblical account leaves plenty of room for artistic license to fill in the story and make a good movie without stretching the bounds of reason and history with this junk.

What this particular writer seems to be doing with the political intrigue is to bolster the historicity of the story of Esther. Unfortunately, no such historicity exists. There is no evidence whatsoever that this story is based in history. In reality, it screams with evidence to the contrary. It was an important part of Jewish literature, and one that reflects their culture, but it is not history. The political themes that were written in were done in an attempt to pass this story off as history.

This is among the most grievous errors committed by Christian filmmakers today. They seem unable to help themselves from trying to scream through their work, "See!? It really happened! Here's the proof! This movie is proof!" Why are they so blind to see the value in making films, or any art for that matter, that simply testifies to the existence of a loving God and a hope for mankind and the future? The advocacy of that worldview would be so much more powerful than the over-the-top preaching and unrealistic story lines that show up in trash like Facing the Giants. Why do they need to insist on making cheesy movies full of miracles that most people never see and happy endings that only belong in the realm of fiction?

The forced injection of politics is bad enough, but even at that, they got it badly wrong. They keep denigrating the evil “Greeks” and their love of equality and democracy! They talk about Greece as if it were a monolithic unified force. The Greeks are also charged with being similar to the Jews because they believed in equality and justice for all. Did they bother to read Greek history? Most Greek city-states were oligarchies or monarchies. The democracies that did exist didn’t look much like we think of democracy today. All it would have taken was a little bit of research.

The bad beginning continues by introducing myriad periphery characters who don't contribute significantly to the plot but who are integral to the scenes in which they appear. This is just bad direction. Consequential action cannot be carried out by inconsequential characters. The audience doesn't know who to follow or care about. Mordecai is Esther's uncle instead of her cousin. They have an invented housekeeper who has an invented son in an unnecessary invented relationship with Esther. The housekeeper disappears and the son becomes a eunuch, and therefore can't marry Esther like he wants to. All of this is entirely without purpose.

Speaking of eunuchs, an enormously inflated role is given to Hegai, the eunuch in charge of the king's harem. Ummm... if the unneeded expansion of the role wasn't bad enough, the role was played by 6'7" Tommy "Tiny" Lister of Friday fame. This is one of the largest men in the film industry and has the deepest voice I've ever heard. He's the main eunuch. Huh? Again we have an example of the writer not having a clue what he's trying to say. You can't do everything. If you want to take on the stereotype of eunuchs being effete little androgyni, (a stereotype enforced by other characters in the film...), then at least mention it once in the script!

This speaks to the most frustrating part of the bad script: it is largely fixable! The mess of the script could have easily been corrected by a half-sleeping semi-talented film student. One could understand a garbage script like Alexander's making it to production: it was being done by Oliver Stone. Debatable though his talent may be, he is something of a living legend in Hollywood. One Night... has no such director or writer. There is no reason this disaster of a script should have made it to production. It smells of a writer, producer, and director making all of the decisions for the film in a vacuum and refusing to listen to or even seek out external advice. Their film is the poorer for it.

Ignoring some of the obvious anachronisms of politics, clothing, and tooth-whitening techniques, (seen at right), one of my favorites from the film is an all-too-widespread ignorance about the Star of David. It is used in nearly every movie from the Old Testament as a marker for the Jews. Unfortunately, its earliest recorded mention is the 12th century... A.D. Yet in this film, as in so many others, it is splashed all over the place to the point of being comical. Here, it magically appears from a crystal necklace when held up to light. Nevermind that the technique used to create images projected from crystal didn't exist back then; it doesn't even exist today as it was used in the movie! This is just stupidity.

The shoddy writing was especially ugly in its half-finished story lines. There were numerous conflicts that were introduced and never resolved. At one point Xerxes thinks Esther is cheating on him, but they never resolve it. At another time, Esther thinks that Xerxes is with another woman, but it is also never resolved. Haman is supposed to have killed Esther’s parents, but it is never fully explained. How or why Esther is romantically involved with the son of her housekeeper is never explained – nor is that storyline necessary. Esther loses her magic necklace and Moredecai later returns it. How did he get it? Who knows. This kind of high school level sloppiness has no place making it to production.

And for a writer concerned with injecting history and theology where there isn't any, he got an awful lot of both of them wrong. Mordecai read aloud from the prophet Isaiah, which had not yet been written. Esther read period. Both Mordecai and Esther were very concerned with being pious Jews, but they had no problem with Esther entering into the king's harem. Bit by bit this movie fell apart.

Peter O'Toole, billed as a star, has less than one minute of screen time. Omar Sharif is misused as one of the confusing minor characters whose role is never fully explained. Tiffany Dupont plays Esther with all the gusto of a cast member from Clueless. (Connecting her to Beverly Hills would also explain the perfectly petite little nose on this Jewish princess...) I'd describe Luke Goss' Xerxes as cardboard, but at least cardboard has a practical application. Goss' character, (shown on the right), is completely useless. Between him and the director, Xerxes moves from being an easily-duped egomaniacal regent in Scripture to being a slightly homoerotic hunky romantic leading good guy who never blinks in the film.

The only useful and passable performances turned in were done so by James Callis as Haman and John Rhys-Davies as Mordecai. They made the most of the little with which they had to work. Although the audience is never really able to figure out who he exactly is, at least we know Callis is a bad guy. Callis and Davies were also the only actors to employ subtlety amid a sea of frying pan to the face caricatures. Davies is always good. I’d watch him read the phonebook.

In all, I left the theatre feeling so... let down. They had $20 million to make this movie. When I think about what could have been accomplished with $20 million... These filmmakers' resources place a responsibility upon them to deliver a quality product. They failed in the most miserable and basic ways. They had the opportunity to make a film that would have been popular both with the blindly-loyal drooling Evangelical consumers who will lap up any crap so long as you slap the 'Jesus' label on it and the average moviegoer who has never heard the story of Esther before and who would be inclined to listen to the message of a well-made film. What a waste.