Wait a minute... YOU'RE NOT MOSES!

Ok, I've stated here MANY times that I'm not much of a TV person. Caro actually gets upset with me because I refuse to watch some of the garbage that she watches on a nightly basis... But last night after work, I hopped on a bus to go see my darling girl and shoot the breeze with her for a little while. Naturally the conversation switched to the topic of television fairly early on, and she was disgruntled over the ruining of her Easter tradition, that tradition being the annual viewing of the classic The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston. (Personally, as much as I enjoy that film, I prefer THIS and THIS as an Easter tradition!)

She mentioned that the classic version of The Ten Commandments would not be aired because SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW got the slightly less than bright idea to re-make absolute classic, and pinnacle of old-school religious movies, The Ten Commandments.

Now, I might not be a TV person, but I AM a bit of a movie snob. And I could have told anyone that this was NOT going to work... EVER... Especially with Dougray Scott as Moses!

And so, after my arrival home from visiting Caro, I looked on the internet to see when they planned on airing this atrocity... my answer, RIGHT THEN! And so I chatted with Marcia and watched this train wreck. Here's a running diary.

8 PM - Ok, the opening credits are rolling, and I already hate it!

8:05 PM - I sit dismayed at the speed with which this movie is already progressing... We're getting no backstory here.

8:20 PM - Dismay overflows into utter shock and appalled-ness. We are 20 minutes in, and Moses has already been cast out into the desert.

8:25 PM - 5 minutes after being cast out into the desert... Even with 2 and a half minutes of commercials, Moses has already met the shepherd girls. So wait, Moses only spent 2 and a half minutes in the desert? Umm, that's kinda bogus.

8:27 PM - I ask myself for roughly the thirty-seventh time, "Um, why do all of the egyptians have British accents?"

8:30 PM - Moses talks to Paris Hilton's crotch... er, um, I mean the burning bush.

8:40 PM - Moses turns the Nile to blood. And with all the technology and special effects available to us now which weren't available in 1956, this still looks lame, and definitely was more convincing in the original.

8:43PM - Another 2 and a half minutes of commercials later, and 30 seconds back into this joke of a movie, and he has already unleashed 3 other plagues... Dayum! Are these bitches trying to set some kind of speed record? Let's remember that this is a long-ass book of the bible, and that people of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith all have a little jones for Moses... We've clearly skipped a lot, and we clearly don't care about character development.

8:43 and 12 seconds PM: I decide I can't handle any more of this nonsense without large amounts of liquor in my system.

8:45 PM - I change my mind... This movie isn't worth my top shelf liquor. So I pour myself a drink and watch the Shawshank Redemption instead.

I don't think I'm going to try for round 2 tonight... I mean the first hour (almost an hour anyway) was bad enough that I had to switch it off over an hour before the actual end. But if you're interested, go ahead. It's on at 9, (8 Central).

Ok, so apart from the fact that they cut out EVERY SINGLE sub-plot (including some rather important ones) let's look at the other really big problem... ACTING.

Now, as a movie snob, I might be a little biased here, but I think when you're trying to re-make a CLASSIC movie, let alone AN AWESOME and WELL-ACTED CLASSIC, you better have a KILLER script (you'd think it was hard to go wrong when your script is based on THE BIBLE! ...But apparently not...) And you better have something up your sleeve casting wise. This one didn't have either. The acting was HORRENDOUS, and the writing wasn't helping matters.

Don't believe me? Here's the review from IMDB.com ... And YEAH, it was that bad.

This is not going to be a great day for Scottish actor Dougray Scott. Trade reports indicated today (Monday) that Heist, the NBC TV series in which he stars as a professional thief, is being canceled after it debuted with disappointing ratings and continued to drop each week after that. At the same time, critics are heaping damnations on his miniseries The Ten Commandments, debuting tonight, in which he stars in the role made famous by Charlton Heston. Tom Dorsey, writing in the Louisville Courrier-Journal observed: "Scott plays Moses more as a 'Why me, God?' person who seems in agony and on the verge of tears much of the time." Scott Pierce, writing in Salt Lake City's Deseret News, commented that Scott's performance is "more wooden than his staff." Another Salt Lake TV writer, Vince Horiuchi of the Tribune, concluded: "We're left with a mucky, blood-stained version of the Prince of Egypt who didn't encourage me to follow His commandments. OK, I did follow one commandment for I cannot bear false witness: This movie sucketh." Commented Matthew Gilbert in the Boston Globe: "Portrayed by actor Dougray Scott, Moses is so lacking in leader-like charisma and confidence that he seems ready to break into tears at every sand dune." Part of Scott's problem may be the script -- the movie script, that is -- according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Wrote David Wiegand: "Unlike Heston, Scott's Moses is meant to be a regular Joe, given to self-doubt, occasional indecision and inattention to his wife and family. But who needs Moses, of all people, to be the guy next door?" Moreover, Scott has attracted some positive notices. Jonathan Storm describes the production as "pretty darned good" and Scott's performance as "superb." In an interview with today's New York Daily News, director Robert Dornhelm said that he realized that he would probably make "a lot of enemies among Jewish groups who would say, 'What did you do to our Moses? ... But I showed [the movie] to my rabbi, and to my great surprise, he had no problem with it."

The guy who called it "pretty darned good" and "superb" must be hanging out with Whitney Houston a little too often, because I think he was smoking something on the job if he was paid to write that review!

I can't handle this mess! I am still at work right now, and I need a drink, because this shit is getting me all riled up!

If you decide to watch this piece of crap, DON'T, I repeat DON'T come bitching to me, wanting that 2 hours of your life back. I'm not letting you borrow my time machine, and I totally warned you!