And it came to pass

Rating: 3/10 (15 March 2002)

Another of the "classic" pictures whose reputation simply baffles me; I remember sitting through it in almost complete indifference, except when some particularly blatant piece of audience-manipulation outraged me. Another commentator has used the phrase "sly retelling," but am I the only one to identify this piece as a sly (and remarkably specious) reworking of the Gospels? The protagonist, in a threatening atmosphere suggesting Herod's massacre of the innocents, is discovered in a garage (modern equivalent of a stable), suffers the little children to come unto him, performs a healing miracle, is "crucified" by its captors, and after rising again. ascends to heaven, presumably to sit at the right hand of the Giant Head. But the nice part is that, unlike the original, embarrassing tale, this version makes absolutely no demands; one is not required to change one's cushy and acquisitive life, to sell one's worldly stuffed toys or love one's enemies or turn the other cheek; in Spielberg's soggy vision, all you need is sentimentality, and the suburbs go on as before.