The Star (2017)
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The Star Movie Review
The Star is a 2017 animated family movie directed by Timothy Reckart and starring Steven Yeun among others. It’s a hugely entertaining, but admittedly silly flick.
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“What happened around this manger
will be celebrated for thousands of years“
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Bo, a donkey, is bored of his regular life and wants to do something different. He sets on an adventurous journey where he meets Ruth, a sheep, and Dave, a duck, who make his journey worthwhile. Obviously, the premise itself where a bunch of animals help the birth of the Messiah is so ludicrous that of course adults hate this film.
However, the movie is so family-friendly and childlike (or childish depending on how you look at it) that it needs to be viewed through the eyes of a child as it was meant and made for them. What I’m saying is – the critics and adult viewers were way too harsh toward this flick which is actually okay at least, and certainly fun to watch, at least it was for me.
It hits all of those predictable narrative beats in an annoying fashion as every single plot point can be seen from a mile away. But, the adventurous side to it is respectable as the second act is particularly spirited and fun. The conclusion is very obvious, but the beginning has its charms and to me that second act is the most interesting and fun.
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Why did they employ so many famous actors and actresses for this little movie is beyond me. Yes, that led to very strong voice work admittedly so, but it was simply unnecessary. I did like the protagonist Bo. He is quite likable and the same goes for Dave the bird. Yes, his twerking and singing modern music was very off-putting, but his friendship with Bo was sweet and endearing.
I also really liked the drama with Joseph and Mary and how they had trouble grasping the idea of parenting the son of God. There lied some very strong potential for more emotional drama, but it was sidelined for all the silly animal hijinks unfortunately. Speaking of silly, the sheep Abby is very annoying. Enough with the screaming, yelling sheep characters, US animation, please. She is the type of very annoying animal sidekick that everyone despises for a good reason.
As for the villains, they were also unnecessary, though I liked the dogs overall. The camels were even more unnecessary and not all that funny to begin with. The major problem with this film is its extremely big cast as it did not need so many characters in it. Thus, the end result felt very crowded and simply half of these characters could have been cut easily and the movie would have been much better that way.
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The Star has fine animation. It’s obviously cheap-looking, but admittedly the character designs are solid, and some of the imagery with the titular star, the manger and the desert landscapes looked detailed enough and actually quite lovely. It’s not ambitious, but it’s serviceable.
The Star is very weakly edited and paced, and also not well directed at all. The script is mediocre, but the entertainment factor was big for me personally. The emotion was there, but sometimes overly accentuated. The dialogue and humor are overall passable. It’s not Sony’s worst, but it’s certainly not one of their better efforts.
The Star has some annoying sidekick characters, an unnecessarily huge number of characters overall and its entire premise is ludicrous for any adult out there, but overall the film, though predictable and standard, is very entertaining, endearing at times and solidly animated and voiced. It’s a fine cartoon that was needlessly trashed by the critics.
