The Star Review

 

Sony Pictures Animation is a studio that is known for having a very mixed slate of films with half of there films being bad and the other half of there films being good. As such you never really know what kind of film your going to get just like you don't know if the the film your getting is going to be good or not and well what alot of people might not know is that Sony Pictures Animation released a christmas movie and so here is my review of the 2017 film "The Star" enjoy.

The plot of the film is a donkey called Bo has to catch up with his I guess owners Mary and Joseph before a hunter kills them and there unborn child. As you might have guessed this film tells the tale of The Nativity only it tells it from the point of view of the donkey which i'm not going to lie is a good idea but the story for this film is honestly so bland that you know where the film is going from the moment it starts which is a shame because the idea is really solid it just doesn't have the story to support it or at least that's what I think anyways.

Starring in the film is Steven Yeun as Bo , Gina Rodriguez as Mary , Zachary Levi as Joseph and Keegan-Michael Key as Dave. Also starring in the film is Kelly Clarkson as Leah , Patricia Heaton as Edith , Kristin Chenoweth as Abby , Tracy Morgan as Felix , Tyler Perry as Cyrus , Oprah Winfrey as Deborah . Kris Kristofferson as Old Donkey , Christopher Plummer as Herod the Great , Anthony Anderson as Zach , Aidy Bryant as Ruth , Ving Rhames as Thaddeus , Gabriel Iglesias as Rufus , Mariah Carey as Rebecca and Delilah as Elizabeth.

In all honesty the acting in the film is really a lot better then it had any right to be since no one would have blamed the cast if they put in the bare minimum amount of effort. However to the casts credit they do make the film watchable since they are pretty entertaining to hear in the film however what holds the cast and the film back is the script because the script is so bland and generic and it gives the characters little to no personality and so the actors can't really do that much with there characters due to the fact that the script won't let them do that much with there respective characters.

Doing the animation for this film is Cinesite Animation with this film being there feature film debut as an animation studio. As a new studio Cinesite Animation might have bitten of more then they can chew with this film just because even tho the animation in the film is honestly really good there are alot of characters and alot of the characters wear fur as such I do feel that Cinesite Animation should have started out with a much smaller story just until they found there footing.

However like I said the animation in this film is honestly really good and until now I had no idea that the animation was produced by new studio. Honestly what sells me on the animation is the fact that all of the animals have human features which in turn allows them to show alot of emotion it would have been very easy to have these animals look and act like there real world counterparts but to give them a slightly cartoonish look to me works for the film and it helps that the backgrounds are honestly really nice to look at as well.

For some reason the makers behind this film chose to give the story a villain because when you think of The Nativity you think of villains trying to defeat our heroes. This should have been a really simple story just showing how Mary and Joseph got from point A to point B it doesn't need a villain at all because all that does is make the story needlessly complicated which just doesn't work for this story in my opinion.

Speaking of stuff that doesn't work the makers behind this film chose to give the film a huge epic third act finale. Which again doesn't work because this should be a really simple story we don't need to see our heroes fight against the villain dogs all we need is a really touching scene between Mary and Joseph and that's it nothing else is needed but this film is far more concerned with trying to be a memorable movie that t forgets to tell it's very simple story and because of that it ends up being nothing more then a forgettable movie.

This film has a running time of one hour and twenty six minuets and six seconds long which for this film is honestly the right amount of time. Since there's barely enough story as it is and so anything even close to an hour and a half would be stretching an already thin story even thinner and honestly i'm glad that the film is as short as it is because it means that I don't have to spend long watching a film full to the brim with issues.

With one of those issues being that this film doesn't need to exist there are literally dozens of films all about The Nativity. So there's really no reason for this film to exist because it adds nothing new to the story because it's the exact same story told in the exact same way with the only new thing being that the story is told from the point of view of the donkey and that's it and that's not enough to justify this film existing.

Now then boys and girls this is a comedy and so that means that I have to talk about the jokes that are in the film. I'm not going to lie the jokes in the film are a very mixed bag for me since for every good joke that's in the film it's very quickly followed up by two or three bad jokes and while it's not unusual for a film to have one or two bad jokes what makes this film standout is that those bad jokes all follow each other with no break and so all your left with is a mostly unfunny and very predictable film.

Overall I think what I just said is the perfect way to sum this film up it's unfunny and predictable as all heck. While this film does have some good things about the film it's mostly drowned out by alot of bad things which is a shame because the idea is honestly pretty unique and it's one that I can very easily see supporting a short film or an animated short film special but as it is this film only gets a 4.5 out of 10 from me.

All and I do mean all of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Sony Pictures Animation fandom wiki page. Since I only went to one website for the images that I ended up using in this review I have no choice but to recommend that you use the official Sony Pictures Animation fandom wiki page since if for strange reason you want to use images from this film the images do have are honestly pretty high quality and they do a vast majority of images from the film as well but honestly why would you want images from this film since so little known and I wouldn't blame you if you forgot about this film even existing because I did forget all about this film existing until a day or two ago.