Let's Watch This: "The Star" (2017)

I remember hearing about The Star before it was released in theaters. I remember all the press releases hyping up the celebrity voices... which is probably the reason I wasn't really interested in seeing it. Whenever I see a new animated movie boasting about all the celebrities they got to voice the characters, I usually get turned off. No, Sony Pictures Animation, I don't care that you have Kelly Clarkson voicing a horse. So I never actually watched it until now.

The Star was directed by Timothy Reckart and written by Carlos Kotkin and Simon Moore. In an interview with Timothy, he said that he felt encouraged to direct the film because he didn't think there were enough Christmas movies centering on the Nativity of Jesus. "It felt like an opportunity to be part of a movie that had not been done before, that's really going to fill a void," he said. It was released in November 2017 and did... reasonably well at the box office, and critics just kind of found it okay. Though as far as Sony Pictures Animation releases in 2017 go, that's not too bad...

Yeah, I haven't seen this one either, though I sincerely doubt it's worse than
something like Peter Rabbit.

I wonder if the folks at Sony Pictures Animation were concerned by what thin ice they were on... an animated movie about the birth of Jesus? They had to know that if they didn't get this right, religious audiences would be furious. And it's a comedy movie with wisecracking talking animals? Granted, this is hardly the first time somebody's done a comedic take on the birth of Jesus... remember that Family Guy episode? Maybe their mindset was "Well, hey, we can't possibly do worse than Family Guy's version of the story."

So, why don't we watch the movie and see if it's a hidden gem or a movie that deserves more flack than it's given? And no, I won't be making any religion jokes. I'm nervous about doing a review of a movie about the Nativity as is.

The movie begins in Nazareth, a long time ago. As an offscreen chorus sings an acapella version of "Carol of the Bells", the camera follows a jerboa as it scurries around until it reaches the home of Mary (voiced by Gina Rodriguez). After Mary shares some of her food with it, she is visited by an angel (Joel McCrary) who tells her that she has been chosen to carry the son of God. After delivering their message, the angel flies out the window and becomes a star in the night sky. Alright, so far this is being done respectfully. The closest thing we have to a joke is Mary wondering if she should say "Thank you."

And then the jerboa hops out of Mary's home, screeching "GUYS! GUYS! YOU'RE NOT GONNA BELIEVE THIS!" in a really annoying voice provided by Kristin Chenoweth. Okay, I'm becoming slightly more worried...

But hey, it could be worse. The jerboa could've been making snarky commentary throughout
the entire scene like some sort of internet blogger who does reviews of animated things in a desperate
attempt to make people laugh.

All over Nazareth, animals are looking up at that star and going "Whoa!". That includes our main character, Bo the donkey, voiced by Steven Yeun. He lives at a mill with another donkey (Kris Kristofferson) named... actually, the other donkey doesn't have a name. So I'm gonna call him John.

Positive thing - I like the design of this donkey. So many animated donkeys are grey, but they actually chose to do something different and make him brown and white. Maybe they thought if they made him grey, he'd look too much like Donkey from Shrek.

"I'm makin' WAFFLES!"

The next morning, Bo is visited by his friend Dave, a talking dove voiced by Keegan-Michael Key who's the main source of comic relief in this movie. He mentions that the royal caravan is in town today. "See?! I told you that star was a sign! We're meant for something greater than this!" Bo tells John. John insists that Bo should just accept his lot in life, but Bo thinks being part of the royal caravan would be awesome. You get to go from town to town, marching alongside clones of Maximus from Tangled, and be a Very Important Animal (a VIA).

Bo's trying desperately to make the DreamWorks Face, but it's kind of hard when you
don't have eyebrows.

Alas, Bo's attempt at cutting his harness is foiled by the mill owner. "I'm gonna go find someone to poop on," Dave says as he flies out of the mill. Yes, toilet humor in a retelling of the Nativity. Strike one, movie. Strike one.

Before appearing in The Star, Dave had a bit part in Valiant.

Six months later, Mary is getting married to Joseph (Zachary Levi) and Bo is still stuck in that mill, staring at Steve's butt 24/7. He's officially given up on getting out of the mill and becoming a member of the royal caravan. But then John decides to throw him a bone - he pretends to be injured, causing Bo to slip out of his harness, and tells him to go get help. When the mill owner shows up again, John tells Bo to seize his chance. Freedom is his... if he can get away from the mill owner.

After a chase sequence in which the mill owner is subjected to WHACKY SHENANIGANS, Bo encounters Mary and Joseph. Mary wants to keep him, Joseph not so much. Then they head inside so Mary can tell Joseph about her, you know, carrying the messiah. Oh, yeah, and Dave caught up with Bo, and he makes another poop joke. Could we please NOT have toilet humor in a movie about Christianity? It just feels wrong.

You might have noticed that I've only featured screencaps of the animals so far. That
stems from the fact that I don't want to make any jokes about the characters that actually
originated from the bible. That's another thing that feels wrong to me.

We cut to three months later and see the three wise men on their camels. They have names, but y'know what, I'm just going to call them Tyler Perry Camel, Oprah Winfrey Camel, and Tracy Morgan Camel. Because that's basically all they have going for them. It's Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and Tracy Morgan as camels. Tracy Morgan Camel and Tyler Perry Camel argue over whether or not they're going to a birthday party or a baby shower. Oprah Winfrey Camel suggests that they're actually going to meet the son of God, to which the other two give her confused looks.

"Wait, you mean it's NOT Wednesday? Rats, now we can't make a 'hump day' joke..."

The wise men (Phil Morris, Fred Tatasciore and Joel Osteen) and their camels arrive at the palace of Herod (Christopher Plummer), where the camels are antagonized by his pet dogs, Rufus (Gabriel Iglesias) and Thaddeus (Ving Rhames). The wise men tell Herod about the new king whose birth was foretold by the star, but most of the scene is actually focused on the three annoying camels. Here is their shtick - the Oprah Camel is the smart down to earth one, and the Tyler Perry and Tracy Morgan Camels are the whacky dimwitted ones. Laugh, please.

Rule of thumb: if an animated movie makes Tracy Morgan unfunny, it is doing something wrong.

Herod tells his scary mask-wearing dog-walker guy, Hunter (Lex Lang) to go out and get rid of the baby. Speaking of the baby, we see the jerboa from before telling a bunch of rodents and pigeons about how the angel told Mary that her child would be the new king. Everyone scatters when the dogs show up and start interrogating the jerboa. I'm not sure what good this is gonna do the dogs, since it's been established that the humans can't understand the animals so they can't tell Hunter any of what the jerboa told them, and even if she told them the woman they're looking for's name was Mary they have no idea what she looks like, but eh...

I can't believe I'm saying this, but can we have the sassy dove back?

Meanwhile, Mary and Joseph are preparing to go to Bethlehem - and they're gonna have Bo take them there, throwing a wrench in Bo and Dave's "joining the royal caravan" plan. After Joseph fails at harnessing Bo, they decide to go on foot - closing the gate behind them, trapping Bo and Dave inside... until Hunter shows up.

Y'know, this is the SECOND animated movie where the villain was voiced by
Christopher Plummer and had vicious dogs for pets. The first, for those unaware, was UP.

Dave attempts to distract the dogs while Bo sneaks out the open gate, but it doesn't work. Then the dogs pick up Mary's scent from the bandage she put on Bo's leg, so Bo and Dave to put aside their "join the royal caravan" plan and save Mary... well, Bo does, anyway. Dave takes some convincing. What they don't know is that Hunter, Rufus, and Thaddeus are hoping that the donkey will lead them right to her, heh heh heh...

Dave claims that he knows a shortcut to Bethlehem... a shortcut that takes them to a canyon that one might expect Wile E. Coyote to show up in.

If only there was a rickety-looking rope bridge they could cross.

Coincidentally enough, Joseph and Mary just so happen to be crossing through that same canyon at that very moment, and if Bo wants to get to them, he'll have to jump - since, y'know, donkeys aren't great at climbing down cliff walls. He falls into the canyon, passing by a sheep on his way down. Her name is Ruth (Aidy Bryant). What's a sheep doing in the middle of a canyon? Wouldn't a ram be more at home in this environment?

Long story short, Bo winds up landing painfully on top of Dave, but thanks to cartoon physics neither of them are harmed. Ruth tells them that she's been to Bethlehem and knows all about it and how to get there... uh oh, I smell a THIRD main character joining their little group.

Please tell me she's not the love interest...

And then, oy, it's back to the camels. They're sneaking around trying to figure out what Herod is up to. He tells the wise men that they're free to go to Bethlehem - not out of the kindness of his heart, no, no, so that HE can find out where the baby is and send him a gift of his own, if you know what I mean. The Tyler Perry Camel turns into Captain Obvious and says that Herod is up to something. "We have to warn the new king!" he declares.

Back to the main characters. They catch up with Mary and Joseph and Bo tries to tell them that they're in danger, but - of course - all the humans hear is a bunch of hee-hawing. I swear I've seen this exact same joke somewhere else, but I don't know where. Then the animals attempt to tell them through charades, and I will admit, Bo's impression of Joseph did get a snicker out of me.

"Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Unfortunately, Hunter and the dogs are approaching - they've been following the animals since they made it down the cliff, and Ruth for whatever reason didn't point that out to them sooner. So Bo leads Mary into a nearby market to hide her, Ruth continues to be annoying, Dave and Ruth's attempts at stopping Hunter are epic failures, and eventually Bo causes a chain reaction that destroys the whole market and sends Hunter flying into a body of water. So I guess Hunter drowns? I doubt he'd be able to swim that well with that heavy armor on him...

"Now who's going to rub our bellies and feed us dog biscuits?!"

Joseph is so mad that he declares he doesn't want Bo near Mary or the baby, dubbing him "just a good for nothing donkey that has brought us nothing but trouble". Bo makes a sad face and decides to leave them and join the royal caravan. "But what about our tiny flock? Flocks stick together!" Ruth protests, to which Bo says that they are NOT a flock and that he never should have followed her. Yeah, you really shouldn't have. She's so annoying. Oh, and by the way, of COURSE Hunter is still alive.

We get a montage of Bo walking away sadly and Joseph, Mary and Ruth walking away sadly as some musician whose voice I don't recognize sings a sad song and they mope and dope until Bo and Dave find the royal caravan.

"NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH SEBEEEEEEEEEEEEEENYAAAAAAAAA
this movie is so weak!"

"You should have... seen 'Coco' insteaaaaaaaaaad..."

"You have bad taste in movies..."

But then Bo's bandage flies off and he looks up at the star in the sky, which makes him realize that he MUST help Mary and blah-blah-blah. He tells Dave to go ahead, but Dave says, "The royal caravan was our dream. But the best part was that it was gonna be US. If all I wanted was to go out and flap among a bunch of fancy wagons, I could've done that a long time ago... look, you lead the way, and wherever you go, your best friend Dave will be right behind you."

There's also a small subplot that doesn't get explored much about Joseph having self-doubts that he can raise the son of God. When he asks the lord for a sign he can, Bo and Dave show up. Then Mary admits that she's scared too but Joseph tells her that she is not alone and asks Bo to carry her to Bethlehem. We get a montage of everyone traveling to Bethlehem accompanied by a Mariah Carey song (no, not "All I Want For Christmas Is You").

I probably shouldn't make a joke about Bethlehem either.

Once they arrive in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph try to see if they can get a room at the inn, but you know how the story goes... the inn is full. And to make matters worse, then guess who shows up? Why, it's the mill owner guy! And he spots Bo!

Wait a minute, what on Earth is the mill owner guy doing in Bethlehem? This feels very contrived.

"You're going to be sold to a salt mine and you're going to like it!"

The mill owner captures Bo and drags him away - and in a case of awful timing, the baby's a-comin'. And Hunter and the dogs are there, too. And every single inn in Bethlehem is full. And worst of all, the camels have returned, and they continue to drag the film down with their unfunny antics.

Why does the Oprah Winfrey Camel have hair like that? Is it supposed to make her
actually look like Oprah? Did Oprah EVER have a hairdo like that?

The mill owner ties Bo to a post. Bo's only hope is to pray to God in a scene that would be very touching if Steven Yeun's performance weren't so bad. Then in comes the NEXT annoying comic relief character, a goat voiced by Anthony Anderson, accompanied by a cow voiced by Patricia Hearton (because, hey, The Middle was popular in 2017, wasn't it?) and Annoying Comic Relief Character Voiced By Celebrity With No Business Doing Voice Acting Number 15, a horse voiced by Kelly Clarkson.

The horse's main character trait is that she sings a lot. Well, I guess that's ONE way
of justifying having Kelly Clarkson voice a character in your movie.

And what luck! Anthony Anderson Goat, Patricia Hearton Cow, and Kelly Clarkson Horse just so happen to have a manger full of hay that a baby can fit in! Patricia Hearton Cow bites through the rope, freeing Bo, who meets back up with Dave and Ruth and tells them to help Mary and Joseph. Dave runs into the camels, and Ruth finds her flock of sheep just in time for the angel to show up and tell them and the shepherds that the savior is being born.

Bo finds Mary and Joseph - unfortunately, so does Hunter. Bo leads them to the manger, then runs outside to find the dogs acting all evil. "If you want to get to my friends, you're gonna have to get past me first!" he tells them.

I know Bo's supposed to look bold here, but he just looks like the sassy animal sidekick
from some other animated movie about to make an unfunny one-liner.

Bo manages to take out Rufus, then fights Hunter, only to get taken down by Thaddeus. It looks like Mary is doomed... or is she?

So, what's the plan here? Are they gonna put Hunter to sleep by having him count them?

Ruth, her flock, Dave, and the camels suddenly charge at Hunter and the dogs, nearly sending them flying off a cliff. But Bo, being the kindhearted soul that he is, doesn't have it in him to let them die and tries to save them. Hunter, meanwhile, actually lets the dogs fall. Congratulations, Hunter, you just crossed the Moral Event Horizon (although considering that he was gonna kill a pregnant woman, he might've crossed it already).

Hunter then learns that karma is a cruel thing as he falls to his doom. Bo, with some difficulty and a little help from his friends, manages to save the dogs. "We're bad dogs," Rufus admits. "You don't have to be. You're FREE now," Bo tells them. Then they all head back to the manger to meet the baby.

It's a very tender moment... until the jerboa shows up again and ruins the mood with another unfunny joke. Come on, movie, you were THIS CLOSE.

What's the Verdict?

That basically sums up the movie in a nutshell... it was THIS CLOSE. It's not an AWFUL movie, I don't know if I'd even call it BAD. The animation is good, and there are a couple of genuinely nice moments. It's just... the potential was there for something really great. The story of the Nativity, told from the perspective of the animals. Great! You could do something powerful with that. Instead, we have this generic animated movie filled with pop songs and miscast celebrity voices and unfunny jokes. Most of the jokes fall flat. Even the scene at the end where Jesus is born has a bunch of unfunny jokes that ruin the mood in it (I only mentioned the one with the jerboa, but there are more). I'm not saying you can't have any jokes whatsoever, but a story like this needs less toilet humor and screaming and more subtle, down to Earth humor.

As far as the characters go, Bo is kind of just your generic "young protagonist who wants more out of life). Dave could be a bit much, but I found him okay for the most part (probably because I like Keegan-Michael Key). Rufus occasionally gets a funny joke. The camels are just annoying, and Ruth can get pretty irritating too, not helped by the grating performance that Aidy Bryant gives (she seems to subscribe to the belief that voice acting = "talk really fast and loud"). The other characters not from the bible are just there to shoehorn more celebrity voices into the movie.

And very few of the celebrity voices in this movie work. At all. Steven Yeun has a very generic "young guy" voice that doesn't bring much to the character of Bo that a professional voice actor like, say, David Kaufman or Phil LaMarr couldn't have. Zachary Levi is basically just doing Flynn Rider again. Oprah Winfrey was not needed. Neither was Patricia Hearton. Or Kristin Chenoweth. Or Tyler Perry. I normally like Anthony Anderson and Tracy Morgan, but their performances in this movie were obnoxious, as was Kelly Clarkson's. There are SOME celebrity voices like Gina Rodriguez, Christopher Plummer, and Ving Rhames who actually do a pretty good job. Aside from that, I'll give them credit for at least using an ethically diverse cast, but most of the celebrities were not a good fit for this movie.

I can't help but wonder if most of the film's problems are on executive meddling. Maybe the filmmakers wanted to make another Prince of Egypt, one that actually retains its dignity throughout with more subtle, less in-your-face humor that gets a chuckle out of you but doesn't feel out of place in a story adapted from the Bible. But then the executives crammed in all these poop jokes and "LOL the camels are wacky" humor and pop songs because they thought the movie wouldn't do well at the box office without it. I dunno, just a theory...

So, yeah. They tried, I give 'em credit for trying, but this isn't a movie I'd recommend. If you want to see animated comedic takes on biblical stories, stick with VeggieTales. If you want an adaptation of the Nativity from the donkey's point of view, watch Disney's The Small One or Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey.