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The Brand New Testament Movie Review

The Brand New Testament is a 2015 Belgian fantasy comedy film directed by Jaco Van Dormael and starring Benoit Poelvoorde. It’s a silly flick.

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“If one day you fall in love with a woman

there’s a great chance you will not spend your life with her“

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God lives in human form as a cynical writer with his young opinionated daughter in present-day Brussels, Belgium. She concludes that her dad is doing a terrible job and decides to rewrite the world, descending to earth in search of her own 6 messengers to write a brand new testament and change the status quo.

This is such a French movie that of course I wasn’t thrilled with it. I did find the premise great, though. The problem here is that the second half resorted to episodic storytelling, which made it far from cinematic and/or epic. The whole apostle angle was both tiresome and uninteresting. It made the film lose its momentum too quickly.

But I did like the first half quite a bit, especially the whole machinations of God and the world building here is excellent. There are a lot of interesting fantastical details here from the washing machine to the computer work of God. Him being cynical was also very amusing to follow.

The Brand New Testament is visually interesting, it has good sets and again some quite intriguing details. The problem is that some scenes and plot points are way too silly, and the emphasis on sex-related storylines was unnecessary and ridiculous. Most of the characters are either annoying or too odd, resulting in a movie that is devoid of true emotion. The direction is mediocre, but the performances themselves are solid.

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The Brand New Testament has an intriguing first half, some memorable visuals and interesting fantastical elements, but it did not fully utilize on its interesting premise due to its repetitive, less involving second half. The characters are also annoying and some plot points are too silly.

My Rating – 3

You can get The Brand New Testament on Amazon.