Movie Thoughts: The Lion of Judah (2011)

• Released: June 7th, 2011
• Directed by: Deryck Broom, Roger Hawkins
• Running time: 1h 27min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A group of farm animals teams up to free a lamb and a rooster from being sacrificed, while learning about faith along the way.

My Thoughts

Fun fact, despite only watching this movie now, I've had it on my list for quite a long time ever since I was a kid. I once saw the DVD in a store when I was very young and wanted it, but never ended up getting it. And ever since then I was just lowkey curious about this film. I knew it probably wouldn't be very good (it looking cheap as hell), but still. It looked at least interesting to me.

And yeah, I will not lie. Having seen it, it is not good. It's a messy movie with quite a few characters (some of which can be really annoying and overstay their welcome) and none of them really feel properly fleshed out. Even Judah himself, despite seeming like the main character on the cover, is really more of a side character needing to be rescued and witnessing certain events than a protagonist. He is there, but he's not super proactive in contributing to the plot. 

The movie also looks, well, bad. This is not the worst CGI animation I've ever seen, but it had a very low budget and it shows. Honestly I didn't even hate some of the designs, some look like they could have potential with a little more polish. But the animation and the textures are just so rough it makes this all look very dated, cheap and unappealing.

That said...I honestly did not hate this movie. Not even in a "so bad it's good"-kinda way. I did get some very minor enjoyment out of this film. I honestly did enjoy some of the characters (even if none of them are particularly developed) and I liked how this was clearly a Christian movie, but it also wasn't too on-the-nose with everything. 

Like yeah, we're following the Easter story, of course, but the movie mostly focuses on just telling this story with an animal-ish twist to it, rather than being a straightforward Bible lesson telling us "here is what it says in the Bible and here is what you should believe and here is what you should take away from it". It is still actually telling a story here, not just giving us morals for the children to believe in.

So yeah, by all accounts, this is a bad film. It looks bad, the writing isn't great or anything, some characters are annoying and others are a bit underdeveloped. But I wouldn't call it terrible. It still has at least some things going for it, even if it's not great.