Customer Reviews

Testament: Daniel [VHS]

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In a world of boring, cheesy, and tacky bible videos, the Testament series brings some needed relief. The theology is deep and meaningful. This video should be in every thinking person's library.

While this is a VHS of this episode, it is available on DVD as well. This is the biblical the story of Daniel from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament of the bible. 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 very unusual animation style, where oil paintings are placed onto animation cells and manipulated. So the animation is limited, but very different. It looks like a painting coming to life, very artistic. There are some changes made to keep the story flowing, but nothing insulting. The other animated versions of Daniel that I have seen also make changes to the story.

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).
But 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. I have enjoyed each of these, and highly recommend them. The price from the many third party sellers at Amazon.com is really affordable too at the time I write this.

This movie has great content. The authors had a great idea on relating the movie content to todays problems. However, poor animation doesn't appeal to modern sofisticated kids (my kids are not going to watch it again). The animator have used dark gloomy colors. There is almost no motion in the scenes. The content also is best suitable to older kids (> 8 years old or older). On the other hand, adults may like it.