Us
Captain Marvel
Widows
The Walking Dead
Log in with Facebook
OR
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.
Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password.
We want to hear what you have to say but need to verify your account. Just leave us a message here and we will work on getting you verified.
Please reference “Error Code 2121” when contacting customer service.
No consensus yet.
All Critics (37) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (20) | DVD (1)
The Young Messiah struggles to hold its audience's attention.
"The Young Messiah" performs no miracles.
We know how the story ends, so there's little in the way of tension.
This uninspiring, borderline inept spiritual drama about the Son of God's formative years preaches to the choir.
This pious drama is a work of minimal imagination and even less subtlety.
Perhaps realizing that enticing nonbelievers into another movie about the life of Christ may necessitate the wild-style of a director like Darren Aronofsky, the filmmakers decided to play it safe rather than risk conservative Evangelical rejection.
It's a miracle it got made in the first place.
This is a most unique way to tell Jesus' story.
[Non-Christians] will find this trudge through Jesus' childhood years laborious, even though it thankfully refrains from proselytising.
The Young Messiah takes a different approach by focusing on a specific point in Jesus's childhood. But the faith-based film drags, and is mostly unremarkable.
'The Young Messiah' helps fill in the blanks.
The problem here is not its one- sidedness, but its one-dimensionality.
Based on an Anne Rice novel, The Young Messiah is an apocryphal story about Jesus Christ as a child. Set after the death of King Herod the Great, Joseph and Mary decide to end their exile in Egypt and move back to Nazareth while also grappling with what to tell Jesus as he starts questioning who he is and his abilities. Most of the film seems inspired by non-canonical Christian scriptures, which present some interesting questions but don't have a lot to say spiritually. Nevertheless, it's an interesting story and the production values are really good. Also, the use of fresh unknown actors helps with the authentic period feel. The Young Messiah isn't bad film really, but it undercuts its relevance by going outside of traditional Christian mythology.
Super Reviewer
Standard speculative conjecture about what might've happened in the life of Christ when he was only a wee one, delivered in that mock seriousness these types of films revel in. Ho-hum. Still, better than Risen was. Already waiting for Mel Gibson's follow-up to Passion of The Christ.
View All Quotes
View All