Customer Reviews

Testament: The Bible in Animation - Creation & the Flood

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the biblical stories of the Creation and the Flood from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament of the bible. In the story of Noah and the Flood they used a traditional 2D hand drawn animations style, An intriguing aspect of the story is their portrayal of what the evil people of the time might have appeared like and acted like. They come across very threatening and at one point it seems they may attack Noah or sabotage the ark. Beautiful background art and animation. The characters are very well done and believable. Great voice acting too. They have a neat cutaway in the middle of the story of Noah telling his family the story of Creation and the Garden of Eden in a computer graphics style of animation. It is 30 minutes long.

The Testament series is notable in that they used smart writers to try to turn each story they chose into a 30 minute program, but also their choice of different animators and styles of animation for each of the episodes. THIS one uses a traditional 2D hand drawn animation. There are some changes made to keep the story flowing, but nothing insulting. The other animated versions of Noah that I have seen all take liberties with the story. The quality of the DVD itself was good, a very clean picture that appears remastered, and clean sound. The series, produced over 10 years ago by Christmas films in Wales and Russia for the BBC, is not made for kids, but for all ages. I believe HBO family channel ran these for awhile a few years ago. There are other DVD's in the series that are stand alone title's, also about 30 minutes each. The series includes "Daniel", "David and Saul","Moses", "Jonah", "The Creation and Noah", "Elijah" (my favorite), "Ruth", "Joseph", and Abraham. The last 3 are in claymation or stop motion animation, like the holiday TV specials).
If you want a good deal, there is another set from the same company that has 4 of the 30 minute stories from this Testament series in a 2 DVD box set. "Testament: The Bible in Animation Collection" is the title to search for, and Amazon.com is where I bought it. The price is almost the same as buying one individual story. That set has Jonah, Abraham, Elijah, and the Creation/Noah story.

Couldn't get past the pictorials of Eve. It unnecessarily shows Eve's bare breasts, which is inappropriate for children, so that spoiled the whole thing since we didn't want our kids/grandkids to view that. Therefore, I cannot recommend this movie.

I had planned to use this DVD in a Sunday School lesson on "creation" for children from kindgergarten to 5th grade. Unfortunately, the DVD only incorporates "creation" in varying segments throughout the DVD, which creates a logistical problem for a classroom setting where we have only a limited time period and can't spend a lot of time fast-forwarding the DVD. The initial segment on "creation" shows Eve's bare breasts, which is inappropriate for children and which would distract them from the lesson learned in the story. In later segments, Eve's breasts are covered by her long hair.