| 80 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Unfolds in a scrupulously accurate historical adventure story that depicts the world of Jesus' birth with an exciting you-are-there verisimilitude.
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| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
The Nativity Story surprised me. I didn't expect such an obvious art film approach. Yet the Bible, in the King James version, is great English literature.
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| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Isaac's emotional performance as the man who learns to share the woman he loves with the God he worships is profoundly moving and gives the movie its heart.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
By grounding everything that went before in an earthy realism, Hardwicke earns the elevation of the nativity sequence, one of the more beautiful scenes in this year's cinema.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Compared to the crucifixion, the nativity doesn't offer as much inherent drama for secular viewers, but screenwriter Mike Rich (The Rookie) generates a fair amount of suspense by framing the action with Herod's slaughter of the innocents, and the journey of the Three Wise Men supplies a warm comedic subplot.
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| 70 |
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
At its best, The Nativity Story shares with "Hail Mary" an interest in finding a kernel of realism in the old story of a pregnant teenager in hard times. Buried in the pageantry, in other words, is an interesting movie.
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| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
It's a handsome production, nicely shot by Elliot Davis on Italian and Moroccan locations, with a performance by Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider") as the Virgin that's so pleasing and minimalist it could have been lifted from a fresco by Giotto.
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| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Don't expect a Caravaggio, but if your taste turns to Hallmark, this is a good bet -- a straight-up Nativity story as safe as death and taxes.
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| 63 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Slow, solemn going, despite its best efforts at thundering soldiers and comic-relief kings.
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| 63 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
In a real sense, Nativity Story is the female other to Gibson's "Passion": Dedicated to life rather than death, it's suffused with a sense of the womanly divine.
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| 60 |
Village Voice
Scott Foundas
There are a few quietly affecting scenes here, in which we see Mary and Joseph as the terribly frightened newlyweds they probably were, unsure of what to make of their extraordinary circumstances. But too often, the actors register as little more than set dressing and, despite Hardwicke's resolve to give us the realNativity as we've never seen it before, much of the movie smacks of convention.
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| 60 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
I have to hand it to Hardwicke: I was a lot less bored by The Nativity Story than I feared I'd be.
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| 58 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
A filmed Sunday-school lesson that favors a dry, by-the-Book approach over even a suggestion of dramatic interpretation. It's more Christmas pageant than movie.
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| 58 |
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
It's a rather lifeless re-telling of the Nativity, with greeting-card imagery and stiff performances.
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| 58 |
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
Other than portraying Mary as an overwhelmed teenager, mystified that God has chosen her to be the mother of his child, it doesn't offer anything that hasn't been playing out in grade-school pageants for decades.
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
This is not a chance to "experience the most timeless of stories as you've never seen it before" but just the opposite: an opportunity, for those who want it, to encounter this story exactly the way it's almost always been told.
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| 50 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
This drab exercise in glum piety slumps where it should soar, sapping the story of its mystery and transcendence with an overriding sense of literality.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
As dull and inert as the ink used to print the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that informed Mike Rich's script.
|
| 50 |
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
As a piece of religious instruction or an animated version of a crèche, it accomplishes its aims. As a movie, however, it's slow, plodding, and not terribly interesting.
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| 50 |
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Memories of dreary Sunday school classes come flooding back courtesy of The Nativity Story.
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| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The Nativity Story is a film of tame picture-book sincerity, but that's not the same thing as devotion. The movie is too tepid to feel, or see, the light.
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| 42 |
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
Other than its overwrought Herod-Antipas scenes, The Nativity Story sticks so closely to the text that it's a total snooze.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
Toddy Burton
The story is good, but the execution favors the safe over the challenging. Personally, I'd rather just read the Bible.
|
| 40 |
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
For an origin story about one of the most compelling and important characters in history, The Nativity Story is pretty damn boring.
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| 40 |
Empire
Ian Freer
Surprisingly sedate telling of the rather well-known tale from Catherine Hardwicke.
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| 30 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
Fatuous, sappy, and dull.
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| 25 |
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
A star rises in the east. A savior is born. Two thousand years later, a surprisingly dull film is made.
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| 25 |
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A deadly dull, by-the-numbers rendition of the Nativity story.
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