The Prince of Egypt (1998)

 

This one was long overdue. But truth be told: it took a while to actually sit down and watch this, as the biblical tale of Moses didn't really appeal to me. But hot dang, as an animated film, this one is friggin' gorgeous. 

Oh, and the cast is loaded to the brim. Loaded. Like, really.

Our tale begins when pharaoh Seti orders the slaughter of the Hebrew babies in his realm, because the slave population has grown too numerous.

Always an uplifting start for a tale: slaughtering kids. 

Yocheved sneaks past the guards and puts her youngest child in a wicker basket and sets him on the Nile, hoping he will reach a safer place. As luck would have it, he lands right in the lap of the queen, who instantly adopts him. 

Several years later, and Moses (our lead) and Rameses are brothers in every sense of the word, playing and being rowdy late teens. But when Moses eventually learns that he is also descendant of the slaves, guilt sets in. After having killed a man, he runs into the desert, where he eventually finds a Hebrew camp and is quickly adopted by them. Here, over several years, Moses is truly happy and then he gets a message from above that he is to free his people from the pharaoh. He accepts and heads back to the court of his brother, but to little avail as they have now have grown apart. Thus Moses unleashes the plagues upon Egypt to convince his brother to agree to free the slaves, which Rameses only does after God actually kills all the firstborns in the kingdom, including Rameses' own son. 

Moses then leads his people to the Red Sea, but Rameses does come back with the plan to slaughter all the Hebrews. But if you know anything about the Bible, you probably know what happens next... 

Story aside, this is one solid film. I don't mean that in a derogatory fashion towards the story, but Exodus is pretty well known, so further elaborating on this would seem a trifle overzealous. Dreamworks was still a fledgling company at the time, but they knocked it out of the park with this one. The animation is absolutely stunning all the time and can easily compete with the best of Disney and then some. 

Heck, this has some of the best animation I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a lot. There is in fact a short scene of Moses and Rameses 'facing off' against one another where the facial expressions are so excellent, it's almost as if the actors themselves are emoting. Not a word is spoken, yet you get the entire gist of it all. Another highlight is the parting of the Red Sea, which looks jawdroppingly awesome.

Top notch.

The voice cast is stellar, but they did manage to get together some heavy hitters. Even the minor characters are spot on. 

Oh, and the songs? Absolutely brilliant. No really.

And maybe in spite of this being a biblical tale, it never gets preachy or overtly religious, save for the obvious points of the story. This is in fact more a tale of two brothers who eventually end up on opposite sides and the torment is very real. 

Check it out, especially if you held off on it for whatever reason. This is great stuff.