The Bible Stories: Jesus is a rather lengthy film that covers the life of Jesus of Nazareth, in his last moments on Earth, and casts quite a few notable actors, including Debra Messing (Nothing Like The Holidays) as Mary Magdalene, Jacqueline Bisset (America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story) and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Angels & Demons) as Mary and Joseph, Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight) as Pontius Pilate, G. W. Bailey (Police Academy) as Pilate's advisor, Philo, and starring Jeremy Sisto (Into Temptation) in the title role of Jesus. Spreading the gospel of God, Jesus won the hearts of many in his time through his offerings of peace and words of wisdom. This film covers many of the miracles that Jesus performed, including healing a crippled man, walking on water, and resurrecting Lazarus. It also shows Jesus in multiple lights, both as a peace-loving man and also a tormented man through Satan's temptations.
It was through these miraculous feats that Christ Jesus ultimately was sentenced to die. Of course, this was all part of God's will so that Jesus could take away all sins of those who believe and repent in Him in an effort to save the decaying world. It was only after being crucified on the cross that the world gained a new opportunity to have eternal life, and it was Jesus' own resurrection that proved He is the Son of God.
Aside from The Bible Stories: Jesus being a great way for people to get a three-hour rundown of Jesus' most famous miracles, including the resurrection, the film did have its flaws when looking at it from a purely technical standpoint, namely the DVD transfer. Because I have the previous release of the film to directly compare it with, The Bible Stories: Jesus falls short of expectations in both video and audio quality. Unfortunately, there is a very noticeable difference in how the film is displayed. The video doesn't have the same vibrant colors that the original DVD had; instead, it has a feeling of being washed out with poor contrast and an ever-present blurriness throughout the entire movie. The audio doesn't fair much better. While the sound itself isn't that bad, there were times throughout The Bible Stories: Jesus where the audio and video were slightly out of sync. I went back and forth between this and the original DVD, on multiple systems, and the results were always the same.
It was also by going back and forth that I realized a couple of very important things concerning The Bible Stories: Jesus. The movie time adds approximately two minutes from that of the original, and after further investigation, the differences lie in at least two of its scenes. The first being that the scene introducing prostitute Mary Magdalene was completely changed, showing her naked body from a profile view, yet with enough detail to deem it inappropriate for a family movie in any respect, but especially when considering that this is the story of the Son of God. I am severely disappointed in this change. Because of it, parents should likely steer children away from watching it instead of embracing it the way it should be. (It should be noted that the original wasn't much better, showing, albeit more of an implication, Mary Magdalene having sex.)
The other scene that was noticeably different in this new version of the film happened to be the ending. I do understand what appears to be a need to update the film by showing Jesus in today's world, but after revisiting the original ending, I can see clearly that the ending should have been left alone. In my opinion, this change to the ending took away from the stigma of Jesus' spirit leaving earth, and the strength of the film in general.
The Bible Stories: Jesus has unfortunately fallen short of my expectations in a number of ways. Given that the original at least had a few Special Features, and this release doesn't, it makes me wonder why the publishers decided to change the film and not offer those changes as a Deleted (or Extended) Scenes feature. Add this with the poor video and audio quality, and The Bible Stories: Jesus should be overlooked if you can track down the original release of the film.
If you can't find the first release, just be wary of the changes as I would still recommend the film purely for the Bible-based content. Based solely on the message and Biblical recreations of film, The Bible Stories: Jesus could have scored at least 10-15 points higher. It's just unfortunate that the transfer quality (or re-encoding) drags this DVD release down.
