Sunday, May 02, 1999
'Noah' goes overboard
BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A little help here, people. Can someone refresh my memory? I must have dozed off during Bible class.
ON THE AIR
|
›What: Noah's Ark
›When: 9-11 p.m. today and Monday
›Where: Channels 5, 22 |
• Exactly when did pirate ships attack Noah's ark?
• How many cases of liquor did Noah buy from the merchant ship that the ark encountered during the Great Flood?
“Strictly for medicinal purposes,” said Noah (played by Oscar-winner Jon Voight).
• At what point during the 40 days and 40 nights of rain did God tell Noah that he changed his mind, and that he may destroy all the animals and humans on the boat, too?
“It's always all or nothing with me, Noah. Life isn't always fair,” said the Almighty to the hand-picked patriarch who built the boat and saved two of every kind of creature of Earth.
“I've decided to make a clean sweep. The ark and all those aboard it will be swallowed into oblivion seas.”
Is this Voyage of the Damned or Noah's Ark?
Funny thing, I had figured that a miniseries about Noah would be based on the Book of Genesis. But NBC's four-hour sweeps movie has outrageous Hollywood fantasies of Biblical proportions.
:Not for kids
Call it “Must Seethe TV” for parents who had wanted to watch Noah's Ark with their young children, as they've shared Charlton Heston's The Ten Commandments or Robert Halmi's Merlin.
Parents may not want to expose their kids to the bloody battles opening the film, far-fetched fabrications about peddlers and pirates, and silly slapstick comedy.
When pirates climb aboard the ark, Noah's wife Naamah (Mary Steenburgen) conks them with a frying pan. According to Noah, that's her best use of any cooking utensil.
“She's a good wife,” Noah said early in the film, “but a bad cook. She can burn water.”
Now we know that joke was almost as old as Methuselah (Noah's grandfather).
Ms. Steenburgen, who starred in Mr. Halmi's Gulliver's Travels, has been reduced to comic relief on NBC's ship of fools.
When Noah told her about all their four-footed freight, Naamah worried about the sanitation system. “Who's going to do all the shoveling? I'm sure the Lord didn't give a thought to that when he dreamed up this idea!”
On Monday, Naamah leisurely strolls along the deck with a parasol, as if she were on the Titanic. About then you expect Noah to climb the bow and shout: “I'm the king of the world!”
The one truth about Noah's Ark is that Mr. Voight performs admirably as the man singled out by God to save mankind. He could win an Emmy, and so could Mr. Halmi's lavish special effects (meteors, volcanoes, typhoons, and turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt). But those are the only redeeming parts.
Poetic license
Viewers should suspect trouble when the first words flash on the screen at 9 p.m.:
“For dramatic effect, we have taken poetic license with some of the events of the mighty epic of Noah and the flood.”
For starters, Mr. Halmi's production rewrote the Bible by placing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah before Noah saves the world. This provided TV's desired happy ending — mankind learned its lesson! — which really wasn't the case, since God had to wipe out the sin cities later in Genesis.
Opening with Sodom and Gomorrah also allowed Noah to cross paths with Lot (F. Murray Abraham), a lovable rogue who pops up throughout the film. After the nasty war between Sodom and Gomorrah (another invention), Lot asked Noah: “Are you staying for the orgy?”
This is the word of the Lord?
“We are basically dealing with a media called entertainment,” Mr. Halmi explained. “We are completely free to bring entertainment and humor into any situation. And unfortunately when we don't, people get bored easy.”
“I think the Bible classes will straighten it out,” Mr. Halmi said about the inaccuracies.
“We had to do Noah's Ark in an imaginative way and put the point through that God was really mad at the world and the people, and obviously Sodom and Gomorrah was the time in the Bible when he should have been the maddest.
“Because of that reason, we combined the two ... These are stories, and what sequence they are in, and how it was done, can be questioned,” Mr. Halmi admitted.
After meeting with reporters, Mr. Halmi dropped one controversial scene in the script by Peter Barnes (The Ruling Class).
“A giant sea-serpent” was to attack Noah's sons, Shem (Mark Bazeley), Japheth (Jonathan Cake) and Ham (Alexis Denisof) while they repaired the ark, according to NBC's synopsis. They were rescued by their girlfriends (Emily Mortimer, Sonya Walger and Sydney Poitier, Sidney's daughter), who “grab long poles, which they use to blind the creature.”
Too bad Noah's Ark turned a blind eye to the truth. NBC really missed the boat.
In tonight's episode, Noah tells his wife: “Maybe we'll meet a scribe one day who will write it all down, so future generations will know what happened.”
And so Hollywood can rewrite the greatest story ever told.
is Enquirer TV/radio critic. Write: 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax: 768-8330.
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