Christian Mingle

       

         According to the trailer, Gwenyth (who even names their kid Gwenyth anymore? Mom always told me that when I was picking out baby names, I should stand on my back porch and shriek their proposed name as loudly as possible, five times, and if I felt stupid doing it, then I probably shouldn’t pick that name. And that’s now GERRRRTRUUUDE EVELYYYYYN UNRUUUUUUH was scratched off the list) is a standard cool-girl, looking for love in all the wrong places. And by “wrong places,” we mean OKCupid or Tinder or eHarmony. Because she’s not looking for love in all the right places (church), she hasn’t found it yet. So, on a whim, she signs up for ChristianMingle.com (which definitely did NOT sponsor this movie) despite the fact that she doesn’t even know what a Christian is or how to act like one, which will definitely NOT be a major plot point in this film. S/O to Emily Luedke for digging this one out of the trash heap.

1. Kickin’ this movie right off with an Owl-City sound-alike, which is about Jesus, and not fireflies. Hilariously, the song is entitled “Me Without You,” and is set to a slideshow of a girl and a boy hanging out, and not a girl hanging out with Jesus, which even more concretely makes my point that modern Christian music is just secular music with “Jesus” inserted in place of “my boyfriend.”
2. Scene of Sad Single Gwen sadly flipping through channels while eating cookies and reading Facebook about all her friends being in relationships, because that’s what single girls do. They don’t cultivate hobbies or friendships, they just pine about how they’re not married.  
3. WHAT, DID YOU JUST THROW THAT POINSETTIA INTO THE TRASH WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO RESUSCITATE IT?! You can’t even keep a plant alive, why do you think you don’t have a boyfriend?!!?
4. OMG IF YOU SIGN UP ON CHRISTIANMINGLE.COM AND YOU DON’T ACTUALLY ATTEND CHURCH, YOU PROBS SHOULD NOT LIE AND SAY YOU ATTEND CHURCH EVERY WEEK. That’s just bad form, and it will be immediately obvious. Hope you’re not Catholic, cuz the jig will be up as soon as you start jumbling that liturgy.
5.  They make a book called “Christianity for Dummies?”
6. This girl has zero conversational skills, no wonder all of her dates have sucked.
7. “Uncomplicated AND a believer!” Haha… this relationship is founded on SO MANY LIES ALREADY AND IT IS LITERALLY 10 SECONDS OLD.
8. Apparently the “Christianity for Dummies” book did not include a section on how to fake a believable prayer.
9. “Who says I’m not Christian? I read the Bible!” Apparently not enough, since you had to read a book called “Christianity for Dummies”
10. This girl totally has a Pinterest board titled “Someday…………………”
11. NO NO NO NO NO DO NOT DIP YOUR SUSHI IN THE SOY SAUCE WITHOUT TRYING IT FIRST the sushi chefs are totes judging you if you do that. It was on NPR, you can read about it here. 
12. You have read the Bible before, but have to read a book titled “The Bible for Dummies” instead of actually reading the Bible in order to learn about the Bible? I just… you’re doing it so, so wrong.
13. UUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I literally (LITERALLY) just did a Tina-groan out loud - this Bible study scene where she tries to recite a Bible verse about marriage and sexual immorality, but instead mis-attributes it to the wrong author…… it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AWWWWWKWAAAARRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.
14. Girl, if you can’t freaking find Romans right off the bat, you are totally sunk. That one is pretty basic.  Did you never have sword-fights as a kid? “GALATIONS 5:17, GO!” Like, Titus, Obadiah, Haggai, sure, but Romans?
15. “I’m really good at faking it.” *snicker*
16. “Your mother doesn’t like me.” Of course she doesn’t, you’re a blatant fakity faker, and moms can spot that in like 0.0000006 seconds.
17. These people are SUUUUCH caricatures of modern Christianity, it is the most painful thing.
18. You’re mad at Christian Boyfriend, so you’re not answering his calls? Real mature. Probably why you haven’t been able to sustain a viable relationship.
19. Girl just ships off and visits Christian Boyfriend in Mexico, where apparently they have crackle-free cell reception, which I don’t believe for one minute.
20. Who nominated this cowboy singer, anyway, because he’s absolutely terrible.
21. Both Fakity Faker and Christian Boyfriend agree that the cowboy singer has a beautiful voice, which is definitely a sign that they deserve each other.
22. Every Mexican character in this entire movie just stands around and stares, while the white people move around and get stuff done. Thank goodness for the white people, otherwise nothing would ever get done.
23. “You know what I think? You’re pretending. The “Christianity for Dummies” book that I found in your luggage didn’t tip me off at all.” Good grief, Christian Boyfriend, how did you fit that thick book into your jacket pocket? An Undetectable Extension charm?
24. “Why does it matter that you’re a Christian, and I’m not, even though I totally said I was, but I was lying about that, and what does it matter that our entire relationship is based on this one very important lie about who we each are?” Hahahahaaaaaaa…… like, how did you expect this to turn out? At what point did you plan on telling Christian Boyfriend that you’ve been faking it this whole time?
25. Skipping work because you have strep throat would NOT buy you a couple weeks, who are these pansies? Go to the Urgent Care, get some Amoxicillin, deal.
26. NO NO NO NO NO DO NOT START READING THE BIBLE WITH GENESIS OMG STOP IT. Yeah, sure, it’s cool for a few pages, with the “Let there Bes” and the “And it was goods” and the “two by twos” and the incest between Lot and his daughters, but once you get to Leviticus, with the menstrual requirements, and the mold, and the uncleanliness, you’ll stall out.
27. Oh, girl, picking a random church because you were walking past on the sidewalk, and they had a rockin’ multiracial praise team with tambourines and lots of clapping, that’s just not the way to do it.
28. Girl, you can’t be disappointed in Christian Ex-Boyfriend because he’s dating a girl who isn’t a Christian from reading “Christianity for Dummies.” I think maybe you don’t have that right…
29. "I’ll pray for you.” That’s the Christian way to end a conversation without saying “Buzz off, jerkface”
30. HOW ARE YOU ANGRY THAT CHRISTIAN EX-BOYFRIEND DUMPED YOU THE FIRST TIME FOR PRETENDING TO BE A CHRISTIAN BY READING “CHRISTIANITY FOR DUMMIES AND WHO THEN DUMPED YOU *AGAIN* BECAUSE YOU CALLED HIM OUT FOR DATING A GIRL THAT ISN’T YOU, A GIRL THAT DIDN’T PRETEND TO BE A CHRISTIAN BY READING “CHRISTIANITY FOR DUMMIES,” BUT WHO ACTUALLY *IS* A CHRISTIAN, AND ISN’T LYING ABOUT A VERY FUNDAMENTAL ASPECT OF RELATIONSHIPS?!?!?!?” Shouldn’t you be mad at yourself at this point, for making such a public spectacle of yourself?
31. How did the little Mexican girl get her address to send her a plot-device letter?
32.  …………………… so she moves to Mexico and teaches English to the little Mexican girl's friends……… except the kids don’t need to learn English, because they already speak it without a trace of an accent…
33. Christian Ex-Boyfriend is back………………? He dumped the Real Christian Girlfriend to come back for the girl who based their entire relationship on a really big lie? You guys are gonna need some major pre-marital counseling

               THAT WAS SO PAINFUL I AM SO GLAD THAT IT IS OVER OMG IT WAS LITERALLY THE WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER WATCHED FOR THIS BLOG AND THAT INCLUDES "GOD IS NOT DEAD." Sorry for the excessive use of caps lock, you guys, but this movie 1000% deserves every capitalized letter. It was absolutely excruciating. The moral of this movie was “Base your relationship on a lie, and it’ll totally work out for you!” Alternative moral was “Mexicans need white people to fix their problems for them.” I don’t have anything nice to say about this movie, it was absolutely awful. I don't even know what the target audience is, because it was offensive on so many levels. Like, "God is Not Dead," is obvi for the apologetics buffs. Kirk Cameron is obviously for men who want to feel good about yelling at their wives. "Left Behind" is obviously for people who think Obama is the Antichrist," and I get it, movies need a target audience. But this... it was just so bad. I don't even know who the writers had in mind when they wrote it. 

  

The Red Tent

     

You cannot convince me that this is not the best movie poster of all time.

      I have heard nothing but good things about “The Red Tent.” A BRL friend from Bethel told me about the Lifetime adaptation, and how I absolutely HAD to read the book. So I ordered it awhile back, and spent last weekend reading it in it's entirety. Then this weekend, I watched the movie.
     The book/movie is about Dinah, one of Jacob’s daughters by his 1^st wife Leah. The only mention of Dinah in the Bible is from Genesis 34, in which Dinah goes out walking one day and is raped by this dude Shecham, who was the son of the local bigwig. After raping her, he was like “Oh… she’s kinda cuuuute, maybe I should marry her!” Presumably Dinah had no say in the matter, because being a lady in the Old Testament SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKED. So he gets his dad to try and talk to Dinah’s dad, Jacob (of the Jacob-and-Esau fame), to see if they could get married. Jacob finds out how this kid Shechem knows Dinah, and understandably flips his lid, tells his sons what happed, and they, understandably, flip their collective lids. Meanwhile, Shecham’s dad is still trying to get Dinah to marry his son, so he goes to talk to Jacob and his sons again, and they’re like “Yeah, it’s totes cool that you’re gonna marry our sister, we have no problems with that whatsoever! But all the people in your local bigwiggery have to get circumcised in trade for her, because… reasons!” So Shecham’s dad is like “Yeah, sounds reasonable.” While all the dudes in the local bigwiggery are lying around groaning in pain, Dinah’s brothers show up with swords and killed all of the men, looted the city, and stole all their flocks of animals, killed Shecham and his son, and brought their sister back. So kind of a weird and bloody little historical footnote.

     BUT the book is super good, just oozing with female empowerment and stuff. And I love me some feminist empowerment, especially when it’s encapsulated by a really great historical mostly-fiction-but-not-completely story that’s based in something from the Bible. Because let's be real - the Bible and female empowerment are usually mutually exclusive terms. Not always (see Tamar, Mary Magdalene, Ruth, Esther), but it’s a good rule of thumb.

     So here we go! I’m super excited to NOT get really angry at some dumb movie!

1. Seriously though, is there nothing worse than an unrequited love-triangle? Unless it’s an unrequited love triangle made up entirely of people in the same family. Leah loves Jacob who loves Rachel, who loves Jacob back, but is also Leah’s little sister. Oh, and they’re all cousins! Bleargh. They are just asking for some recessive genetic diseases.
2. For being known as "the ugly sister," Leah is extremely beautiful.
3. Jacob’s totally ok with having Leah instead of Rachel. Dude gets his cake and can eat it too!
4. Wow, Jacob, four wives instead of one. SO much cake.
5. Jacob is SUCH a shrewd investor. Honestly, the only thing I knew about this guy was that he’s really good at breeding sheep, and that he tricked his dad into giving him the eldest-son birthright, which seems a little low, buuuuut at the same time, the eldest-son birthright is a pretttty sweet deal, sooo…… I’m not sure how much I can really fault him for that. Also he had a crapton of kids, because that tends to happen when you have four wives.
6. WHYYYYY are Simeon and Levi always the jerks? In “King of Dreams,” they were the dark-haired, shifty-eyed jerkfaces, and now the same is true here, too! Maybe I didn’t pay attention enough in Sunday School, but I’m not sure that’s ever really implied in Genesis.
7. Where do all these incredibly beautiful women get the tools to sculpt their incredibly beautiful eyebrows? I mean seriously you guys, I have a mirror and at least 40 more centuries of beautification technology on them, and my brows do not look even half that good!
8. Yarrow root??! The only thing I know about yarrow root is that if you chew it, your tongue goes numb (thanks Camp Friedenswald!). Turns out it’s also Bronze Age Ambien.
9. ENTER THE BAD GUY. You can tell because he wears a lot of black eyeliner. Dinah, gurl, he totes notices you peeking at him from across the way. You’re not being sneaky at all.
10. “Not as beautiful as you.” Oh, you charmer. 
11. Ohhhhh gurrrrl you are gonna regret that decision. Stripping down for a dude you just met that wears that much black eyeliner, and whom you plan to marry without asking your dad is just not the mark of a well-considered choice, not when you’re an OT lady. Nowadays, sure, whatever, full steam ahead. Back then? No.
12. Dinah’s sexy striptease is made even more awkward by the complete lack of response from Not-So-Bad-Guy.
13. OHHHHHHHHHHHH the family couldn’t POSSIBLY want Dinah back, because she’s no longer “pure.” Haha, you guys suck. But seriously, though. Sit down. *Relatedly, I read a book over Christmas that was all about stuff like that, and how a girl’s dowry wasn’t so much payment to her dad in exchange for the work he’ll not get out of her once she left the farm, but more as payment for her intact hymen. PATRIARCHY.
14. Mmmmm… circumcision. Nothing says “good bride price” like a big pile of foreskins.
15. WHY is it that Simeon and Levi and Joseph are the only sons that ever show up in this movie? Jacob has 10 other sons, and none of them are ever even mentioned!
16. “It’s just a flesh wound!” Yeah, Not-So-Bad-Guy, that’s what they all say. Look at what happened to that one dude from Game of Thrones! “Just a flesh wound to my sculpted and incredibly defined pecs,” but then he dies of blood poisoning or something.
17. How in the crap did Jacob’s sons (ie Levi and Simeon) slit Not-So-Bad-Guy’s throat without Dinah noticing?!? They were in the same bed, 6” from each other! I would certainly notice that sort of thing, especially if there were blood-loss-induced thrashing going on.
18. You know, Jacob, bringing up the shame your daughter brought on your name by not asking his permission to marry Not-So-Bad-Guy MIGHT have been better brought up in a conversation that did not directly proceed from blood-drenched Dinah’s completely justified ranting involving your sons and their rampant murder of everyone. Just saying. Time and place, dude. Also, Dinah, wow. Call it like it is, gurl. 
19. Not-So-Bad-Guy’s mom is a total boss. What a lady, I mean, really. Strong female role and all that.
20. I take it back. She’s a total BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH.
21. Is anyone planning to do anything about the Dinah’s episiotomy-induced HEMORRORHAGE?!??!? She’s bleeding all over the place! Jeez guys, I know you’re Bronze Age and all, but if you can do an episiotomy, you can sure as heck fix one.
22. No, random carpenter, Dinah’s kid Re-mose does NOT have Dinah’s eyes. Hers are blue, his are deep brown. It’s like saying Harry has Lily’s eyes, when he clearly does not.
23. Wow, this is hardly the Dreamworks’ version of the confident and carefree Joseph that lived in an Egyptian cell for like 5 years, practicing botany and vibrato in his spare time. This terrified and unkempt Joseph is probably more accurate, though.
24. Re-mose, your hair is stupid looking. And you’re a complete douchenozzle.
25. GUUUUHHHHHHH girl has some crippling self-esteem issues. And some dude swoops in and saves her. Thank goodness for the mens, amirite, ladies?
26. OH SNAP DINAH’S KID RE-MOSE WORKS FOR THE EGYPTIAN VIZIER WHO IS NOW JOSEPH, WHOSE WIFE IS IN LABOR AND IS BEING ATTENDED TO BY DINAH. IT’S ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY REUNION! Except no one knows it, because none of them actually meet. Also, I don't want to be like "Well, in the BOOK..." but in the book, Joseph is an arrogant but illiterate former slave with homosexual leanings. Not very Lifetime-movie-friendly, I gather.
27. Now that they have met, it would have been better if they hadn’t, cuz all hell breaks loose.
28. Joseph can forgive his brothers for selling him into slavery, but can’t forgive his sister’s kid for nicking his pecs? He’s probably (justifiably) afraid of dying of blood poisoning. But c’mon dude, where’s that soulfully-singing botanist we’re all so familiar with?
29. So if all the kids are coming together to be with their dying dad, where are all the other brothers? Seriously, again, it’s just Joseph and Dinah. But I guess if I’d sold my brother into slavery, and killed my sister’s husband and every dude in his kingdom, and were the direct agent of their misery, I’d probably lay pretty low, too.

     At the end of the movie, everyone is ok with everyone else and all is forgiven, because what is a Lifetime movie if it doesn’t end like that? The book is a lot darker. That said, it was a very well done production, and I very much enjoyed it. You guys, look, it’s totally possible to do a religiously-themed movie without kowtowing to idiotic, overused themes, and Lifetime just did it. It’s not perfect, because of course it couldn’t be, but of all the religious-themed movies I’ve reviewed for this blog, this is the one that I’ve hated the least, by a long, long shot. I probably liked it because it took a lot of artistic liberties with a story that is a tiny, weird little footnote in Genesis, one that hasn’t been told like 9,000 times. And it's cool because it tells the story from the lady's point of view, which, let's be honest, is pretty much absent from the OT. The mens get to tell all the stories, and as a result, maaaaaaybe stuff gets a little twisted in the telling. "History is written by the victors," and all that. This story was also awesome because it involved a bunch of super boss ladies who were very cool. I would legitimately like to hang out and menstruate in the red tent with them. It sounds like it would be really fun. You should defs read the book. Unfortunately, you can’t go see “The Red Tent” in theaters, but you can probably stream it on the Internet. If I can do it, you can, too. And you totally should. Full marks.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

   

       Alternative titles – “Everyone is White,” “The Writers are Basing the Movie off of Sunday School Flannelgraphs and Not Off the Bible,” and “Moses, You’re Doing it Wrong.” Now, I've seen Dreamworks’ “Prince of Egypt” at least a dozen times, and know every word to every song in there, even that crazy song sung in Hebrew, so I defs know what I’m talking about when I say that this most recent adaptation is pretty weird. It’s mostly accurate, by which I mean “Christian Bale is obviously Moses, the plagues are sequential, Tzipporah is a hottie, and the Hebrew God is maybe just a little bit petulant.” So really, not that much accuracy. Errors, suspensions of belief, and laudable moments are as follows:

1. Moses and Ramses are both given swords with the words “short enough that you won’t trip over them.” Hurrrrr that’s what she said.
2. The only Black lady in the entire movie is obviously just hanging around in a position of sexual subservience. Way to go, typecasters.
3. Haha, yeah, Hebrew slave, when you came up to Moses in the middle of the street and told him to meet some random slave dude in the slave quarters at midnight, I’m sure no one noticed that, especially not the 6 guards that are all around Moses. Nah, bro, you’re good.
4. WHAT?!?!?!? No, Miriam did NOT put Moses in the river, her MOTHER did! Jeez, did you guys not read Exodus 2 at all? Have you been depending on flannelgraphs from Sunday School this whole time?
5. Moses, understandably super pissed that he’s a prole and not a prince, storms out and… kills an Egyptian guard…? Yeah, makes sense.
6. Moses is exiled because Ramses (now Pharaoh) is mad that he killed an Egyptian guard. Ok, yeah, that’s pretty on-point.
7. Goat toenail trimming is a great place to meet the ladies. Just ask Moses and Tzipporah, they’ll tell you. One minute they’re trimming goat toenails, the next, they’re getting married!
8. “Proceed,” is all Tzipporah says before Moses starts taking off her clothes. Um. Ok?
9. FAST FORWARD 10 YEARS WITHOUT TELLING US!!!! Or maybe it’s longer, I don’t know. Moses has a ten-year old son, so maybe they waited 5 years to have kids, and it’s actually been fifteen! Christian Bale doesn’t actually age though, because, as we all know, that dude is classic.
10. WHOA, MUDSLIDE ON THE MOUNTAIN!!!!
11. Moses takes a mudbath while God (a ten year old boy with a very petulant way of speaking), tells him to go fight for the Hebrews in a very nonspecific way. No instructions, nothing. The burning bush is just kind of chillin' in the background. I’m pretty disappointed in this scene, to be honest. That whole burning bush thing, with the “who made man’s mouth, who makes him deaf or mute?” is actually kind of my favorite part of the whole story, and this movie cut that out, which makes me really mad. Also, the “Prince of Egypt” soundtrack accompanying the scene is some of the most powerful music out there, and I’m sad that the whole burning bush scene is just Moses taking a mud bath while a ten-year-old boy talks smack to him.
12. Whoa, Moses, really, you haven’t told your WIFE that you grew up in Seti’s palace? You think that maybe, in 10-15 years of marriage, maybe that sort of thing should have come up BEFORE you went riding off back to Egypt again?
13. Tzipporah is not supportive at all, which is not how it is in Exodus. She goes with him, and when God tries to kill him this one time on the road (I regularly tell people to do something, and when they go to do it, I try to kill them. It happens to the best of us, I get it), she CUTS HER SON’S PENIS and puts the blood on Moses’s feet so that God can recognize him again. That is one of the weirder parts of the Exodus narrative.
14. In response to Moses’s classic “Let my people go,” Ramses is like “Yeah, no, because infrastructure, amirite?” And Moses is like “Oh, yeah, you’re right dude, that is a completely valid concern!” Haha, except not. He’s like “Ok, cool, hellfire and damnation, then!”
15. Pharaoh’s army looks like Stormtroopers in those hats.
16. Um no. Burning ships in the harbor? Training guerilla Hebrew slaves during the day? That’s not how this works. You gotta F.R.O.G! That stands for Fully Rely On God, for those who did not grow up in the evangelical tradition of the late 90s.
17. The god-child and Moses (no mudbath this time) have a conversation that basically goes like this: “Hey, Moses, remember that time when you were taking a mudbath and I told you that I needed a guy to go fight for the Hebrews? Well, you went and fought for the Hebrews, pretty much exactly like I told you (except I didn’t give you any specific instructions on how to do that), and it didn’t work, and now Pharoah is totes pissed. So now how about you sit back, relax, maybe take another mudbath, and watch me do my thing.”
18. The Nile is red because the crocodiles ate all the boat-men on the river, turning the river to blood. No.
19. Quick succession of the plagues, which, mercifully, are all in the right order, but unmercifully, are unaccompanied by the "Plagues" song from "Prince of Egypt," which is probably my favorite.
20. NO THE PLAGUES DO NOT AFFECT THE HEBREWS THAT’S NOT HOW THIS THING WORKS. *Caveat – I double-checked after the movie, and apparently the only plagues that do not specifically bother the Hebrews are the plague of darkness and the plague of the firstborn. My bad.
21. Oh for Pete’s sake you guys, those hailstones are NOT that big. Just chill out.
22. Ramses yells to an empty room about how he’s going to drown Hebrew children. He’s slowly going bonkers, probably because of the Egyptian nobility’s penchant for marrying their own fathers and daughters.
23. Ramses… you can’t just put your mummy-baby into that admittedly adorable little sarcophagus. Mummies need like 90 days to chill on a bed of salt and have their brains pulled out through their nose, and their organs packed in special little jars! Didn’t you read the mummy-making books in 3^rd grade like the rest of us?
24. Oh, what? Moses’s SWORD was the thing that divided the Red Sea?! WHAT??!?!?!? The subtle implications of that little change in narrative have HUGE ramifications. Suddenly, Moses is no longer the peaceful shepherd-vessel of God’s spirit, but the charging-forth champion FOR God! You guys, this is NOT COOL.
25. NO, NO, NO, WHERE IN THE BOOK OF EXODUS DOES “THEY WALKED ACROSS ON DRY LAND” TRANSLATE TO “THEY SLOGGED THROUGH WAIST-DEEP WATER”?!?!?!?!?!? Relatedly, slogging through waist-deep water with 400,000 other people and their panicked animals sounds like the best way to get oneself killed before reaching Canaan.
26. TORNADO?!?! I mean, whatever, it’s a little one, but… OMG *MORE* TORNADOES?!?!?! WTF, WHERE IS THE PILLAR OF FIRE?!?!?!!?!?
27. And then Moses’s guerilla fighters (that do not exist) go out and try to fight with Ramses’s charioteers? No, you guys, come ON, have you NOT read Exodus 14:14? The Old Testament Moses is a super hippie, he’s like “Yeah dudes, just chill, God’s gonna wipe these guys up like spilled milk, just calm down, it’ll be fine.”
28. A brief parlay with Ramses, with the converging combinations of tornadoes and the returning sea is a great idea, Moses! It’s awesome that you’re using your words instead of your sword in order to talk some sense into your former best friend, but for realz, dawg, you need to GTFO.
29. Hey Moses, maybe instead of throwing a rock at your son to let him know you’re back in town, maybe you wanna be like “Hey son, I’m BA-A-AA-ACK!!! Dja miss me?!!?” or something that doesn’t involve throwing rocks at your son.
30. Tzipporah is super excited to see 400,000 Hebrew refugees in her town, because that’s not a strain on the infrastructure AT ALL.
31. That’s super nice of the god-child to make Moses a cup of tea while he chisels out the Ten Commandments.
32. You guys, WHERE is Miriam in all of this?!?!!? The song of Moses and Miriam in Exodus 15 is SUPER nice, and they IGNORED IT!! And once they’re wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, who else but Miriam is supposed to get leprosy to teach Moses a lesson about trusting God? Seriously, the wimmins in this story get shafted.

      So yeah. That’s the story of “The ‘Exodus’ Writers Are Basing This Movie Off a Sunday School Flannelgraph and Not On The Bible.” It was just so… militaristic. So much less “Hey, God’s gonna fight for you, just chill,” and so much more “Yeah, God probs defs wants us to whip our swords out and kill the Egyptians!” And Moses’s staff was missing! It doesn’t get turned into a snake, it doesn’t part the Red Sea, it doesn’t get hit on a rock to produce fresh water, and it doesn’t turn the Nile into blood! I mean, this thing is a super important prop, and they just do away with it! Or, better yet, they TURN IT INTO A FREAKING SWORD, BECAUSE SWORDS ARE AWESOME YAY!!!!! I mean, you can just look at the movie poster, where his GIANT SWORD is just out there for the world to see, to see that this is not your typical Moses movie about your typical Midianite shepherd. It was pretty disappointed. My professional opinion is that you should not watch this film.