It's become popular over the years to consider this a bad film, yet many don't seem to realize the producer's intentions. This film was created as a comedy or light drama. There are many aspects deliberately included for the purpose of humour. However, many of the jokes just don't come across properly and when taken seriously make the film seem bad.
There are many aspects of it that differ from the actual Bible story, however one must realize that the Bible story is only about a paragraph long. So trying to do the story as written would make it difficult to do even a half-hour story.
This film is best enjoyed if you just take it as a creative retelling and don't take it seriously. And it's obvious that it never was meant to be taken seriously. Those elements pointed out as bad writing, such as the pirates, were deliberately added with a tongue-in-cheek approach. If anything is bad about it, it's that the comedy doesn't come across as well as it's suppose to.
When buying this film one has to be careful of the version they get. There are many versions in which scenes have been deleted such as the incident with the pirates. Some versions run 140 minutes while others are 160 minutes for multiple parts. 178 minutes is listed as the full running time, but the mini-series when aired was presented in two parts. Some releases have it in three parts, including end credits. The TV version shortened the end credits and ran about 173-174 minutes long (without ads). So it's hard to tell if the 178 minute version is counting the end credits twice. But it would seem that the full version is 178 minutes long. (I don't have the different versions to compare.)
There are many aspects of it that differ from the actual Bible story, however one must realize that the Bible story is only about a paragraph long. So trying to do the story as written would make it difficult to do even a half-hour story.
This film is best enjoyed if you just take it as a creative retelling and don't take it seriously. And it's obvious that it never was meant to be taken seriously. Those elements pointed out as bad writing, such as the pirates, were deliberately added with a tongue-in-cheek approach. If anything is bad about it, it's that the comedy doesn't come across as well as it's suppose to.
When buying this film one has to be careful of the version they get. There are many versions in which scenes have been deleted such as the incident with the pirates. Some versions run 140 minutes while others are 160 minutes for multiple parts. 178 minutes is listed as the full running time, but the mini-series when aired was presented in two parts. Some releases have it in three parts, including end credits. The TV version shortened the end credits and ran about 173-174 minutes long (without ads). So it's hard to tell if the 178 minute version is counting the end credits twice. But it would seem that the full version is 178 minutes long. (I don't have the different versions to compare.)