Judas 3/8/04 (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Is it just me, or does the guy playing Jesus remind you of Matthew Lilliard?

 

[ThomasC]

I just turned it on a few minutes ago, and just turned it off. That was painful. The Passion of the Christ significantly raised the bar for Christian-themed movies, and Judas is way below it, from what I gathered in the few minutes that I watched. I'd like to see how it started out, but I forgot to set my VCR, so unless ABC reruns it, I'm probably out of luck.

 

[DeeF]

It's awful, just miserably bad.

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

Didn't see it. Was it as bad as "Noah" a few years back? At times, I thought I was watching a comedy it was so poorly done.

 

[Patrick Sun]

It felt like a high school production.

 

[ThomasC]

Brent, I didn't see "Noah", and based on all of the negative reviews, I'm glad I didn't. "Judas" was just as bad, if not worse than "Noah". The director seemed like he was using the camera for the first time, the contemporary dialogue was absolutely atrocious, and the actor playing Jesus couldn't act worth a darn (I take that back, he played the death decently). However, I didn't think it was all bad. Johnathon Schaech, who played Judas, did a decent acting job, at the very least. With the exception of Schaech, I agree with Patrick's assessment that it felt like a high school production. Even so, most high school productions have at least decent writing. This was bottom-of-the-barrel writing, which I was shocked to discover was from Tom Fontana, the man behind the pen for HBO's "Oz" and NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street". Maybe the guy playing Jesus didn't do all that bad of a job, but just seemed bad because he had no good material to work with, and because of the bad direction. One of the reviews on IMDB says that this was in the can for three years: "Judas was so ahead of its time, Disney had to lock it up in the archives for three years until a more controversial film came along to obscure the outrage!"

 

[Roberto Carlo]

I had a chance to speak to Fontana and the producer, Father Frank Desiderio, and FWIW, more than 40 minutes were left on the cutting room floor trying to make it fit within a two-hour time frame. I agree with the Jesus-as-Matthew Lillard comment and the writing was weak but I can't help but wonder if the original version would have improved things. I told Fontana that the DVD has to include them.