ABOVE: Watch the trailer for Noah.
TORONTO — It’s been banned in several Muslim countries for depicting a prophet but Noah is expected to ride a wave of Christian support to reap a hefty profit.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Noah stars Russell Crowe as the titular ark-builder and Jennifer Connelly as his wife. Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Anthony Hopkins are also in the cast.
Should people flood into theatres to see Noah or is it a failure of Biblical proportions? Here’s a look at what some of the critics are saying:
“You should see Noah,” declared Alissa Wilkinson of Christianity Today.
“I can’t promise you’ll like Noah. Nor would I suggest that if you don’t, it indicates that something is necessarily wrong with you.”
Wilkinson called the movie “a solid adaptation” that is “visually and imaginatively compelling.”
She added: “Noah is not poorly made or shoddy. It is not political. It is not evangelistic. It is not a theological treatise. Rather, it’s a movie that approaches the level of ‘good art.’ It asks big questions. It explores concepts like grace, justice, pride, guilt, and love. It respects its source material and respects the power of human imagination. It takes a sober look at the evil in the human heart.”
READ MORE: What the critics are saying about more recent movies
At Rolling Stone, Peter Travers said “hold off on burning Aronofsky at the stake till you see Noah” — which he described as a film “of grit, grace and visual wonders that for all its tech-head modernity is built on a spiritual core.”
Travers predicted the movie “will surely jangle scholars with its deviations, digital trickery, souped-up battles, pipe guns, sexual activity, an ark stowaway and what appear to be giant robot refugees from Michael Bay’s Transformers protecting Noah and his family.”
Richard Corliss of Time didn’t hold back his enthusiasm.
“Movies aren’t supposed to be this good this early in the year,” he opined.
“Darren Aronofsky brings wild ambition and thrilling artistry to one of the Old Testament’s best-known, most dramatic, least plausible stories — Noah and the ark — with Russell Crowe infusing the role of God’s first seaman and zookeeper with all his surly majesty.”
Corliss said the movie risks “confusing those who don’t take the Bible literally and alienating those who do” but called it “a water thrill ride worth taking.”
She wrote: “Like any good artist, Aronofsky has avoided predictable, literalist retellings of beloved Sunday school stories by inserting new characters, bringing parenthetical figures to the fore and making one of history’s most enduring and universal myths his very own.”
Hornaday said Noah is “clearly deeply respectful of its source material but also at times startlingly revisionist, a go-for-broke throwback to Hollywood biblical epics of yore that combines grandeur and grace, as well as a generous dollop of goofy overstatement.”
Claudia Puig of USA Today agreed Noah is “no by-the-book Bible story” and more like “a visually mesmerizing sci-fi adventure saga loosely based on the book of Genesis.”
Puig was no fan of the running time (“it starts to feel as though it’s been going on for 40 days and 40 nights”) but called it a “bold re-telling with plenty of spectacle.”
At the Boston Globe, Ty Burr described Noah as “equal parts ridiculous and magnificant.”
He wrote: “It elaborates on the Book of Genesis’s slender story of Noah and the Ark with subplots and additional characters and computer-generated effects that would have Cecil B. DeMille drooling. If that stands to put off the faithful, many of them, and many others besides, may be won back by the film’s ambitious seriousness of purpose.”
Burr praised the performance of Crowe. “He’s big, he’s implacable, he can turn on a dime from sensitivity to mournful fanaticism,” he wrote. “Most importantly, he carries himself with the authority — the sheer moral weight — of an Old Testament patriarch.”
Paul Byrnes of the Sydney Morning Herald said Aronofsky tried to make “a meaningful film for a modern audience” but loses his way “perhaps because he does not trust us.”
“The film’s environmental message – that we must act now and face the damage bill of global warming or perish – is repeated so often that it loses power,” opined Byrnes.
He said Noah isn’t about religion.
“It is about dominion, whether we have the right to destroy the planet. If there is a bigger modern theme, I can’t think of it,” Byrnes wrote. “Falling short of greatness, the film falls back on warfare, spectacle and sermon. It is big, wet and portentous, but the rebirth of mankind should be more than that.”
At the New York Times, A.O. Scott said even though the scale of this film “is larger than anything this director has attempted before, Noah is less an epic than a horror movie.”
Scott explained: “There are some big, noisy battle scenes and some whiz-bang computer-generated images, but the dominant moods are claustrophobia and incipient panic.”
The movie is “occasionally clumsy, ridiculous and unconvincing,” Scott wrote, “but it is almost never dull.”
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