The Passion Of The Christ was an unexpected cinematic sensation, as all kinds of Christians poured out of the woodwork to see a film a film about Jesus getting his head kicked in by a bunch of people speaking a language nobody understands.
So it was only going to be a matter of time before other religious movies started getting made. Since Mel Gibson already called shotgun on The One Where Jesus Bites It, that left The One Where Jesus Comes Back To Life, Kisses A Prostitute On The Lips And Goes Up To Heaven On A Cloud and The One Where Jesus Is Born. Unsurprisingly New Line thought that the second one would probably make for a more family-friendly movie and so went and made The Nativity Story, a movie about Jesus being born that got its world premiere yesterday at the Vatican, at a screening attended by The Pope's second in command. The Pope would have gone, but he's really much more of a Face/Off kinda guy.
2006 has been a year of non-stop religious fun from beginning to end, with Jesus getting mad props from just about every celebrity you can think of. Kanye West dressed as Jesus for the cover of Rolling Stone, Madonna hopped onto a giant crucifix to sing a half-baked techno tune on her last tour and Elton John… well, Elton John wants all religion banned, but we suppose you can't have everything.
OK, so Christianity has taken a bit of a knock lately; if it wasn't bad enough that everyone who saw The Da Vinci Code now thinks that Amelie is Jesus' great-granddaughter, then the time when Christianity's greatest backer – Mel Gibson – got pissed up in car, slagged off all the fucking Jews and shouted "Sugar Tits!" at everyone must have left most right-thinking Christians with their heads in their hands. But now religion is preparing to fight back; firstly with the new FoxFaith studio producing movies that only Christians are allowed to enjoy, and secondly with the release of forthcoming New Line blockbuster The Nativity Story.
Up until now, the nearest thing to a nativity movie that any of us have seen came when Britney Spears dressed Sean Preston up as Baby Jesus and shut him in a room with some livestock, but now there is actually a real movie coming out about the nativity, and it got its world premiere at the Vatican yesterday in front of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the deputy Pope. Presumably the real Pope was busy laying down tracks for his album of duets with Michael Jackson. All the stars of The Nativity Story attended the Vatican world premiere except for the teenage girl who played Mary because some dude totally knocked her up. Reuters reports that The Nativity Story was very well received by the audience:
The audience of some 8,000 people who attended a benefit gala premiere in the Vatican's vast Paul VI Hall broke into applause five times during the screening and again at the end. It was the first feature film to premiere at the Vatican. "It is well done," said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State, who ranks second only to Pope Benedict in the Vatican hierarchy. "It re-proposes this event which changed history with realism but also with a sense of great respect of the mystery of the nativity," he told reporters afterwards. "It is a good cinematic event … the judgement is positive."
It's thought that some of the events which sparked applause during The Nativity Story included the shocking moment when one of the Wise Men gave Baby Jesus some Myrrh, as nobody watching The Nativity Story really saw it coming; the moment when Baby Jesus jumped out of his crib to do a dance like the baby from Ally McBeal, as nobody really saw that coming either; and the moment when – in an obvious attempt to retain the more shock-loving members of The Passion Of The Christ's audience, the Innkeeper disemboweled his wife in slow motion with a shepherd's crook.
We're not sure if we'll go and see The Nativity Story when it's released in cinemas later this year. We'll probably wait for Jesus: The Resurrection to be released and then we'll have a 24-style real-time Life Of Jesus DVD marathon.
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