The Star
“And in the morning, I’m hailing Mary.”
The story of the Nativity, as seen through the eyes of the animals involved—the donkey Mary rode to Bethlehem (voiced by Steven Yuen), the camels carrying the Magi (Tyler Perry, Tracy Morgan, Oprah Winfrey), the sheep being watched by night, etc. It sounds like a clever idea, and director Timothy Reckart and writers Carlos Kotkin and Simon Moore get credit for good intentions. Their execution, alas, leaves something to be desired. The story is padded out with the kind of aimless animated slapstick that made the Madagascar and Nut Job franchises such tough sledding, and it mixes uneasily with the Sunday School pieties about Mary and Joseph and the melodramatic menace of a pursuing assassin sent by King Herod (Christopher Plummer). It’s harmless enough, but nowhere near as inspiring as it aims to be.
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