Movie Thoughts: A Jesus' Side (2008)

 

• Released: October 26th, 2008
  
• Directed by: William R. Kowalchuk Jr.
• Running time: 1h 22min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A stray named Jericho and his family must stand up to a vicious dogcatcher named Sykosus. Meanwhile, Jericho also befriends Jesus Christ and witnesses his crucifixion.

My Thoughts

The existence of this movie is still somewhat baffling with me because "The Passion of Jesus but with dogs added in" sounds kind of like an insane premise. But it makes it work...somewhat. Okay, not really, but it's far from the worst movie I've ever seen. 

What I do like about this movie are its themes of found family, forgiveness, love and compassion. Those are strong and come across very well. Jericho himself embodies these themes very well as he starts out as a reluctant human-hating stray but eventually learns to forgive, let others in, and accepts Jesus and the other animals around him as his new family. That's handled pretty well.

But the rest of the movie is...not very graceful to say the least. The animation isn't terrible but also not great, often it feels a tad wonky and the characters seem to struggle with staying on-model some of the time. The story is simple but the execution just feels very wonky and somewhat tone deaf (goofy animal antics while also having Jesus dying on the cross just doesn't feel like it meshes very well).

The characters outside of Jericho, Maya, Jesus and Ulysses are pretty mediocre though. I guess Petra is somewhat okay (though she should've told Jericho of his family's fate sooner). But then there's also some painful comical relief characters, especially Miguel the chameleon whom nobody in this movie seems to like, not even his own found family. 

And just...why would you add in a shitty comic relief character that isn't just annoying to the audience, but also to the main characters in this film? That just knocks another ten points off the character likability meter for this character. It also feels a bit inappropriate to me for there to be so much (poorly executed) comic relief in the story of Jesus' crucifixion and one of relentless animal abuse and killings. Just feels a tad tone deaf.

Also...Dim Sum. First of all, this character looks absolutely terrible and hideous. And she's clearly not supposed to be, she's supposed to fall into that "ugly cute" kind of territory pugs and similar breeds fall into. But in practice she just looks like a sentient ballsack. She's supposed to be a shar-pei (I think, at least it's implied?) but looks nothing like it. But what I dislike the most about her is that she is literally just a plot device and nothing else. She is the aspect that kicks the story into gear, and for the climax she once again has to be rescued. But meanwhile she doesn't have her own character or personality or anything. She is just "baby who needs helping" all the time and it annoys me. Would it be that hard to give her at least a personality to make her feel less plot device-y? I guess it is. 

So yeah, while this movie has some good themes going on and I do like some of the characters, the rest is kind of messy and not great. I guess "messy" overall is just a good way to describe this movie. It is an interesting idea for a movie, but it needed a few more drafts and some more polished animation and less annoying characters and tone-death comic relief to make the story work. Also please make Dim Sum look less like a scrotum.