Familiar with The Prince of Egypt? Good. Squeeze that movie into a forty-six minute run time and this is basically what you get. This is what Golden Films released in 1998 in the grand tradition of the Mockbuster.
The story? You know the story! It is the story of Moses going from the time of his adoption by Bithiah to the Hebrews making it across the Red Sea.
As in the film that this one is a mockbuster of, Rameses II is the Pharaoh of the Exodus and he has a brotherly relationship with Moses.
The film has examples of:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: As in Prince, Rameses is portrayed as dark-haired instead of red-haired. His father is no more red-haired than he is.
- Adapted Out:
- Gersom, the son of Moses and Tzipporah, is omitted.
- The historical Rameses had a pet lion that even fought alongside him at Kadesh. The lion being omitted while Moses is given a Canine Companion is something that baffles viewers familiar with history.
- Age Lift: Aaron, Moses's brother, is younger than him, unlike Aaron in The Bible.
- All There in the Manual: Since the only Ramses proposed for the identity of the Pharaoh of the Exodus is Ramses II this identifies the Pharaoh at the beginning as Seti I.
- Canine Companion: Moses has one who follows him loyally even when the former abandons Egypt.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As evil and selfish as the Pharaoh is, he seems to genuinely love his son. During the Plague of Darkness, he became concerned when his son told him how scared he was of the darkness. He also was greatly distraught over the tenth plague claiming his son’s life. Special mention goes out to him attempting to keep watch over his sleeping son despite it doing him no good.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: The Pharaoh who kills the Hebrew firstborns has the typical design of the heroes.
- Freudian Slip: Moses' mother finds her son after he killed the foreman and tells him to escape before the Pharaoh discovers who he really is. That is how Moses discovers he is not Egyptian, but a Hebrew.
- Happily Ever Before: As usual. The rest of the story is a cycle of Hebrews screwing up badly, Moses begging God for mercy and some Hebrews dying. At least the older generation will not see the Promised Land.
- Hunk: Moses is handsome and muscular, with a sharp, squarish face. With or without beard, he is good-looking.
- "Just Joking" Justification: The men who annoy Jethro's daughters tell Moses that they were just kidding, but Jethro's daughters disprove that, telling Moses that they keep annoying them all the time.
- Plot Hole:
- Moses tells Jethro that he is an Israelite, but he doesn't know anything about Jacob (a.k.a Israel) and Israel has not been consolidated yet (Moses would not live long enough to see Israel).
- Tzipporah does not travel with Moses to Egypt, but she appears when the Hebrews are moving note
- Race Lift: An inconsistent one with all of the main characters being white and almost all of the background characters being every Afro-Eurasian ethnicity under the sun! It is true that Egypt has been a crossroads and melting pot since time immemorial but the problem is that a lot of those background characters are supposed to be Hebrews and are thus supposed to be the same ethnic group.
- Royal Mess: The term "Pharaoh" was not used contemporaneously for a ruler until 1200 BC, thirteen years after the death of Ramses II.
- Setting Update: A minor example. Rabbinical Judaism tells us that Moses' lifespan corresponds to 1391-1271 BC, telling us the Exodus happened in 1311 BC and thus that the Pharaoh of the Exodus would have been Horemheb, the predecessor of Ramesses I who is the father of Seti. Jerome, on the other hand, gives Moses' year of birth as 1592 meaning the Exodus would have been in 1512 with Thutmose I as the Pharaoh and Ussher gives Moses' year of birth as 1571 meaning the Exodus would have been in 1491 with the Pharaoh being Thutmose II.
- Wizard Classic: Rameses has three of these in his court. Clearly, the writers didn't realize that there's a fine line between fantasy and religion.
