I gotta admit, I was expecting something else. i certainly wasn’t expecting this very odd musical that panders to everyone about the birth of Jesus. This movie seems catered to try and rope in teenagers who don’t go to church. The best part? It has audio description. readily accessible audio description. Other faith based films from 2023 like Jesus Revolution and Sound of Freedom hit streamers without their tracks, but this odd rock musical with Antonio Banderas as a jealous King had audio description day and date on Netflix.

It is basically the story. It just has a very modern feel, like everyone talks like they just slid into your DM’s, but i can’t really say the acting is bad. Sure, there are aspects of this that feel totally weird as this goes after the kids looking forward to unironically binge watching Pretty Little Liars, but no one was a bad actor.

That’s super important, because I’ve seen my fair share of Christian movies that seem to just hire people off the street, or used actors like Kevin Sorbo who never had talent to begin with. Somehow, someone got Banderas to be in this.

The music all sounds like the same song. Every musical number in this is way over produced, and everyone sounds like a robot. It’s so pervasive, if the audio description had sounded like it was run through auto tune, I would have thought it on brand. Luckily, this has pretty decent audio description for a head scratcher of a movie.

This movie actually apologizes for itself at the end. It realizes that the liberal choices it makes may piss off the staunch and boring Christians, but the opportunity to breathe life into a story told over and over by not bothering to make people sound like 2000 years ago, as well as mixing the songs with traditional Christmas music is all intriguing. This movie is nothing if not surprising, and while I have no idea why a Christmas movie is dropping in February, there’s a little glimmer of something here. or perhaps that’s the Myrrh.

Final Grade: C+