Review: Book of Joshua: Walls of Jericho speed-runs some Old Testament in fine form

Regardless of your beliefs, the Bible is pretty objectively full of great stories. There are lots of weird and magical things that happen. Huge battles. Kingdoms rising and falling. A guy gets swallowed by a whale and survives. Some guys get thrown in a furnace and survive. Multiple people die and survive (including the arguable Main Character of the whole thing).

I was raised in a Christian home and watched a lot of Christian media that was made for kids, entertaining stuff like Veggie Tales and The Storykeepers. But it was all, pretty much, straight-to-video stuff. The only theatrical one I can recall from my childhood is The Prince of Egypt, which remains probably the marquee Christian kids' movie, although it arguably wasn't even a Christian movie since it was made by a Hollywood studio and tackled an Old Testament story.

All this to say, it's weird to me that Christian animated features are few and far between. But this year, that seems to be shifting. The King of Kings was a solid hit recently. Later this year, there's an animated movie called David (about David) that will also be in theaters. Animated movies are solid bets, a lesson that Hollywood seems slow to learn (even as, year after year, some of the biggest releases are animated). Maybe these faith-based movies will help further prove the point.

Book of Joshua: Walls of Jericho, which hits VOD on June 3, is probably more in line with the stuff I watched as a kid than with its theatrical neighbors from this year. It's doesn't have the dazzling animation of The King of Kings, or even of The Prince of Egypt. It tackles its story pretty head-on, without much razzle-dazzle. There are a lot of names thrown around that you are sure to forget, unless you're a Bible scholar.

And despite all this, or because of all this, I ended up enjoying this movie quite a bit.

When I'm watching a, let's say, on-the-cheaper-side animated movie, I would much rather it be cheap hand-drawn animation than cheap CGI animation. That's what we get here, with sturdy, well-drawn characters that maybe don't move super fluidly, but it gets the job done. And they populate some pretty beautiful backgrounds. Whereas most of the characters look pretty lifelike in their proportions, designs, etc., the scenery gives us some more expressive and impressionistic flourishes, which I appreciated. And there are a few characters, like the first evil king we're introduced to, whose designs really go off. He's a towering brute with an exposed belly and a drool-y mouth, crazy eyes, the whole shebang. He's one of the characters who really pops, even in death. (I also really liked the two Israelite soldiers who have Mario-and-Luigi-coded red and green sashes to help them stand out from their comrades. It made me smile every time they popped up on-screen.)

I told you he was ugly!

And speaking of death, this movie is pretty brutal. Because it's Old Testament, this is a violent tale, and the movie doesn't shy away from it. The blood isn't gratuitous, but it is there. And the action scenes are some of my favorite in the movie, and a place where the animation really enhances the content. Because the characters don't move super fluidly, the action takes on an extra-stylized flow, which makes for some cool and very legible choreography. In so many action movies these days, shaky camerawork and frenetic editing make it all but impossible to really follow what's going on. Here, that's not the case. It almost feels like slow-motion at time, watching the swooping leaps and sweeping slices of a sword. The scale of the battles may feel a bit muted, but the details within then are solid.

If you know your Bible at all, you probably know the gist of the story of Jericho. Joshua, having taken over as leader of the Israelites for Moses, leads a march with the Ark of the Covenant around the walled city once a day for seven days. On the seventh day, after some stomping and shouting, the walls come a-tumbling down, and the Israelites are primed to enter, at long last, the Promised Land.

It's a very simple story, so simple that I wondered how it would fill nearly 100 minutes of screentime. Smartly, the movie starts a bit before Jericho, speed-running some Old Testament history to get us up to speed. We hear about/see the pillar of fire/cloud that leads the Israelites, the manna from Heaven, we meet Moses and some of the other leaders. There are a lot of names thrown out -- it sometimes feels like reading the book of Chronicles -- but it does the job.

Once things slow down, we watch as the Israelites confront an evil king who refuses passage through his lands, even though they promise not to take anything as they travel -- no food from the field, no water from the wells, nothing. They just want to keep on keeping on. Not good enough! The king has the Israelite representatives brutally beaten for not saying the name of their god (it would be a sign of disrespect, they say). Rahab, one of the king's dancers, steps in, so she gets beat up, too, and sent away with the surviving Israelite. She ends up becoming a Jericho-born ally to Joshua, Moses, and all the rest.

From there, we see the armies clash, which leads to a bit of a montage of the Israelites just generally kicking ass and taking names. Everywhere they go, they're victorious, protected by God and able to face any foe (in a flashback with clever Western-inspired scoring, we even see them take on a dude named Og who looks like an actual giant, like Goliath-status). So by the time they, and we, reach Jericho, the table has been amply set. We understand why the king of Jericho is so afraid, why Joshua is so emboldened, and also why some of the Israelites feel frustration. They've been through so much already. They're desperate to finally enter the Promised Land. But now there's another evil king (with another Jafar-like advisor...the first one had one, too) in another massive city in their way.

I'm of the opinion that, when a Bible story is being told really well, it feels like a fairy tale, or maybe even a fantasy epic. Book of Joshua: Walls of Jericho manages that feat. There are larger-than-life foes who represent impossible odds. There are wizened old men hearing the ASMR-like voice of God emanating from the purple fire that hovers over the Ark of the Covenant. There are brutal battles, arrows flying, blood flowing. This has a lot of the trappings that make bigger, more expensive movies like Ben-Hur pop, the swords-and-sandals grit that feels baked into the source material, even if the Bible might read a bit more dryly.

And, even though the outcome is inevitable (obviously, God's team wins), the stakes are well-established. There's noticeable unease when Moses steps down and appoints Joshua as his successor. The human face doing the bidding of the Divine matters. It's hard to untangle God from the ones who serve Him. And there's a line from the King of Jericho about how, if the Israelites are wiped out, their god will also cease to exist, that I thought was pretty fascinating as a thought exercise. How many gods have died over the years because no one is left who believes in them?

Because this is Old Testament, the movie also doesn't end up feeling super preachy, which I think can be a boon for a faith-based movie. Of course, the underlying theme is pretty much "Trust in God, because He is all-powerful and can protect you and guide you, etc." That's not subtext, it's text. But the film isn't hitting you over the head with it, putting verses up at the end to try to save your soul, having some random flash-forward to Jesus on the cross. This movie is telling this part of the Bible and trying really hard to tell it well, which I appreciate. It's a job well done.