THE YOUNG MESSIAH (Cyrus Nowrasteh). 111 minutes. Now playing. See listing. Rating: NN
As Easter approaches, the megaplexes slowly fill up with Christian cinema. Last month gave us Risen, and Miracles From Heaven and God’s Not Dead 2 are waiting in the wings. Today, huzzah, we get The Young Messiah, which imagines Jesus Christ as a very polite seven-year-old. I guess that’s a thing people want to see.
Shot on the cheap in Italy, The Young Messiah serves as a prequel to every other New Testament movie, dropping in on the Lamb of God (newcomer Adam Greaves-Neal) as he and his family depart Alexandria for Nazareth upon hearing that King Herod has died.
All is as well as it can be for a Jewish family under Roman rule, but little Jesus is already aware that healing the sick and raising the dead aren’t things every kid can do, and he has questions about his nature that Joseph (Vincent Walsh) and Mary (Sara Lazzaro) aren’t willing to answer.
That’s pretty much the whole movie, freely adapted from Anne Rice’s Christ The Lord into a series of dull conversations about nothing, cross-cut with a subplot in which a Roman centurion (Sean Bean) searches for this young messiah on orders from Herod II.
It’s only suspenseful if you aren’t familiar with the story of Christ – but if you aren’t, there’s no reason you’d be watching this.