Noah's Ark (1999)

Fresh and Exciting

Awesome Movie

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Complete waste of four hours of time I'll never regrettably get back. I wish our local library would take it off the shelves. Their "poetic license" goes way beyond the boundaries of that definition. Complete travesty and pile of junk. For starters, Noah's sons AND THEIR WIVES entered the ark. Secondly, mankind remaining and the poor remaining animals were destroyed immediately by this epic point in history. Pirates?? Pirates such as depicted in this film didn't appear until circa 1700s or so.Most of this four hour travesty is spent adding bunk such as Lot gleefully breaking off his wife's salt-pillared finger to show off later in the film; a much too long pirate fight scene, and the mysterious Peddlar for whose presence in the film remains a complete unnecessary sporadic figure. The arguing, shrewish details cast upon Lot's wife, while completely ignoring or barely referencing the Rainbow's first appearance to mankind as a symbol of a covenant between God and Noah. The stupid, manic depictions of the survivors on the boat, which by the way, was SEALED by God until they landed. Ugh. Terrible, terrible movies. Bunk.How the great Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen managed to get suckered into this adaptation of a beautiful Biblical story pummelled by the idiocy of modern screenwriters is beyond me.

Let's make this clear, I'm rating this highly because it's a very entertaining BAD movie. If you like that sort of thing (and you know who you are), this may be the movie for you. If you're looking for a serious Biblical epic or an *intentionally* funny movie, keep looking.I saw some clips on Encore, and assumed it was a parody (think "Monty Python's Life of Noah"). Then I googled it, and realized it was meant to be taken seriously. With that in mind, it's kind of like a horrible car wreck you can't look away from.Where to start...First of all, they combine the stories of Sodom and Gomorra. Since I don't actually believe either one, this didn't bother me so much. God warns Noah that He's going to destroy Sodom, and Lot gets saved because he's Noah's friend, rather than the whole "Please rape my daughters" thing that's in the Bible. In fact, Lot's daughters are left out entirely, which also gets them out of the awkward part where he gets drunk and has sex with them after they leave the city (what, you never learned that part in Sunday school?). The Ark stuff comes later.In order to make appeal to a wider audience, the "punched it up" a bit, with action, cheesy special effects, and attempts at humor, some which are funny - although the funniest bits are unintentional. There's also an incredible amount talent wasted on this film. Oscar winners (!) Jon Voight and F. Murray Abraham play Noah and Lot, with Mary Steenburgen and Carol Kane playing their wives. Even James Coburn makes a couple cameos. Their salaries didn't leave them a lot left over for minor things like decent sets. The battle scenes really do look like Monty Python. In addition to playing Noah, Voight also provides the voice of God, presumably because they couldn't afford James Earl Jones. Also, what is it about made for TV movies and accents? Noah and his wife clearly have American accents, while most other people - including their kids - have strong British accents.The tone is a roller coaster, ranging from sincerely reverent, to bawdy humor (Lot: "Not staying for the orgy, Noah?") to actual slapstick (Lot's wife fall head first into a vat of dye at one point). The music faithfully tracks the tone, transitioning from Cecile B. DeMille to Three Stooges.You may wonder why the flood happens only halfway through the movie. Without giving any spoilers, I'll just say that there's plenty to come. Grab your beer and popcorn, because that's when things get *really* weird.So if you like to watch bad movies and give them the Mystery Science 3000 treatment, keep this one in mind.In the end, I dinged it a couple of points because as a two part miniseries, it's a bit too long, and when it's not really bad, it's merely boring. I'm seriously considering buying the DVD so I can edit down to a 90 minute party cut.

Noah's Ark is a 1999 TV movie directed by John Irvin that features Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen together with F. Murray Abraham,Mark Bazeley,Jonathan Cake,Alexis Denisof,Emily Mortimer and Sydney Tamiia Poitier. It tells the Biblical story of Noah's Ark from the Book of Genesis.Noah is an ordinary laborer who one day begins receiving messages from God. It seems the Lord has a special assignment for him: since God is planning on destroying the world with a massive flood, he wants Noah to build a giant ark and fill it with one male and one female of each animal on earth. So why Noah of all people? As God tells him, "You fit the bill. Good times, bad times, you believe in me." And why a 500-foot- long ark? "I think big! I made the world in seven days!" Joining Noah on the trip of a lifetime is his wife Naamah and many animals.This is very bad and clumsy movie. It is an example of how a filmmaker makes an irresponsible work to make Biblical movie.Taking artistic license to tell a story ultimately changed the real events as narrated in the Book of Genesis.It seems that producer deliberately made up everything, to show that Bible for him is just a book of fairy tales.Only the presence of Jon Voight and his performance as Noah together with the cast saved this movie from the lowest rating.

NBC should be ashamed. I wouldn't allow my children to see this. I definitely would tell my church to stay away. This movie is proof as to why NBC has always been a 3rd rate network The producers, actors, and writers should get on their knees and beg God's forgiveness for making this work of fiction. There were no pirates. Noah's wife didn't parade around on the deck of the ark. The ark had NO deck. Lot wasn't even born when this event took place. Did anyone attached to this project try reading the Bible? There were more than two animals of each type taken. Read the story in Genesis. How could anyone bring this to any screen, small or large!