Bible Town
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 "I was so excited to head to Bible Town today, I couldn't fall asleep last night!" - Sarah
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Bible Town is an animated Religious children's film produced and released by WowNow Entertainment in December of 2017. While the film hadn't received any reviews from professional critics, any reception it gained from audiences was overwhelmingly negative, especially from the Youtuber SaberSpark.
Plot
Friends Jimmy, Sarah, and Tammy are on their way to Bible Town, a fantastic place full of people who love to share stories from the Bible with anyone who visits. As the three friends journey along in their rainbow hot-air balloon, they tell some Bible stories of their own.
Why It's Going To Hell Instead
- Horrendous CGI that causes the characters to look like they're made of plastic (when they don't look like outright statues). And it's also incredibly limited, to the point where there are actually no scenes in the entirety of the movie that show the characters walking or moving from one spot to another and every single shot has the characters simply stand in one area and any movements from them in said shots look incredibly unnatural and stilted. Which, as you can already guess, means the film has little to no genuine plot (an issue that will be discussed in further detail in later points).
- Bland voice acting that sounds like none of the voice actors genuinely cared about what they were involved in. As none of the performances in the film sound expressive or passionate in the slightest. Not to mention that the audio for Tammy's voice noticeably isn't even balanced with Jimmy and Sarah's, sounding quieter than the latter two.
- On top of that, the characters can sometimes mispronounce words at times. For example, when Jimmy and Sarah are recruiting Tammy for the trip, the way Sarah says her name sounds more like she's saying "Pammy" rather than "Tammy".
- The lip syncing is ATROCIOUS. It never matches up with what the characters are actually saying for more reasons than one. Those being that for a majority of the time, they're lips won't move much (or even at all in some sequences), while other scenes have their mouths opening all the way and simply staying that way for a good few seconds before they once again close their mouths and don't move it again for at least a good while before they start barely moving again. And the list goes on. The fact that the actual way the teeth of the characters are designed make them look incredibly uncanny (see WIWGTHI# 8).
- None of the characters in the film have any established personality in the entirety of its (already pretty short) runtime apart from "I Wanna Go to Bible Town!"
- A majority of the film doesn't even follow the (albeit very few) characters, but is instead a narration of Bible stories by said characters with images to showcase the events of the stories. In fact, just to really but it into perspective just how much of the movie revolves around this, the exact amount of time in the film that actually shows the characters onscreen and follows them as characters rather than the stories they read is 10 minutes and 52 seconds, which isn't even a quarter of the film's runtime! Making the stories themselves come off as little more than filler in what is already a already pretty short movie and given how they take up so much of the film, that makes the film about 87.5% pure filler.
- Some of the images that are displayed during the stories don't even match what the characters are saying. For example, as PhantomStrider pointed out in his Top 6 Worst Religious Animated Movies video, a scene that has Sarah talking about how a young child was being taken to be destroyed, the image onscreen in said scene has the characters all smiling, bright images, and an overall happy tone as a result. Heck, her voice even sounds pretty cheerful even though she's talking about children being slain!
- Despite being a movie centered entirely around Catholic religion, there are actually some inaccuracies with the Bible in the movie. An example being the filler images used when the kids are telling Bible stories to each other in the hot air balloon (as mentioned in the previous point), and some of them show Jesus in the story of Adam and Eve, even though Jesus wasn't born at that time.
- Laughable dialogue. A major example being Sarah's "I was so excited to head to Bible Town today, I couldn't fall asleep last night!" (which provides the infobox quote). Other examples include Jimmy and Sarah (respectively) telling Tammy "Everybody in Bible Town knows all these stories from the Bible!", "And because everybody there is so super nice, they will gladly tell you a story from the Bible!", and "Yeah! They know all of them! That's why it's so cool!" In fact, the entirety of that exchange between the trio is downright ridiculous and sounds like the characters are just straight-up making fun of themselves. And, as SaberSpark mentioned in his video on the movie, it sounds more insulting towards Christians than anything.
- The animation itself isn't just bad, but the characters themselves look uncanny due to their ridiculously huge and lifeless eyes, awful lip syncing, creepy-looking teeth (which, to quote SaberSpark, make them look like robots wearing the skin of humans), and unnatural body movements that makes any sort of body language from them look like they're simply flailing their limbs around.
- Speaking of additional aspects in the animation, the backgrounds also couldn't be more generic if the movie tried. A common trait with WowNow Entertainment movies, because, as pointed by SaberSpark, not even the backgrounds of the movies can be original (as well as the characters models), as almost all of them were most likely cheap frames (or models in the case of the characters) bought online.
- Misleading Title: Despite being called "Bible Town", a majority of the movie takes place in the hot air balloon with the kids telling Bible stories. And even when they eventually do arrive in Bible Town, it still uses even more of it's runtime to show the characters telling Bible stories rather than showing them actually doing something to make the film have any sort of plot!
- The title isn't just misleading, but it also sounds stupid and lazy. Making a movie about a Religious town could work, but giving said town a name as generic and unoriginal as that, not to mention also making it the title of the movie itself, is not an example of how to make said concept work.
- False Advertising for 4 Reasons: On the DVD cover for the movie, there are two boys along with Tammy in the hot air balloon. One with blonde hair and a blue shirt, and the other with longer brown hair and a yellow shirt. But neither of them are ever shown in the movie itself. It's also never confirmed if the blonde boy on the cover is supposed to be Jimmy (due to bearing a somewhat closer resemblance to him than the other boy on the cover), but even then, Jimmy has brown hair and a pink shirt in the movie. So it's also confusing on top of being misleading. Sarah is also never shown on the cover either, despite one of the main characters in the film itself unlike the two boys there instead. Tammy is seen with a pink shirt when in the actual movie, she wears a blue tank top. The blonde boy can be seen holding a Bible, but in the movie, he nor any character in the movie can be seen holding the aforementioned book.
- Similar to films like Joshua and the Promised Land, Dorbees: Making Decisions and Finding Jesus (the latter of which being another film that was, unironically, released by WowNow Entertainment), this film has absolutely no respect for it's Christian audience, (that it's, by the way, heavily marketing itself towards) their intelligence, or their beliefs. As it doesn't even try to be anything more than a shameless cash-in on the success of media geared towards a Christian audience, and therefor doesn't put effort into anything (which explains many of the problems previously listed). Because just like the aforementioned films that are also examples of this, it's animation is beyond lazy, it's voice acting is garbage, it's characters have no personality or complexity, and it's concept isn't just stuffed down it's audience's throats as much as possible, but it too has no effort put into it in order to make it interesting or gripping. As these kinds of movies don't care about the stories that they're retelling nor their demographic that their aiming their films at and simply credit them with the intellectual capacity of an amoeba. As it doesn't care at all about actually treating those with Christian beliefs that watch their movie with respect and simply assumes that Christians will by anything if it involves their Religion. Which is not true at all, as Christians still deserve media that treats them with respect and doesn't just want to profit of them for their beliefs. And just because a piece of media is made to educate about a certain Religion doesn't mean it has the right to treat it's audience like they have zero intelligence and only exist for the sake of making a quick buck off what they believe.
Redeeming Qualities
- The characters, while bland, still aren't mean-spirited towards one another.
- Some of the pictures shown for the characters' narrations of stories from the Bible are admittedly pretty nice-looking, despite being mainly used to stall for time and drag out the film's runtime.
Reception
Despite not receiving any reviews from professional critics so far, Bible Town received extremely negative reviews from internet reviewers and people who have seen the movie. With many criticizing it's unfinished animation, voice acting, plot, and tremendous amounts of filler. As of 2021, IMDb has a rating of 3/10.
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Categories:
- Bad films
- Bad media
- Low-budget films
- Religious films
- Family films
- Independent films
- Animated films
- Comedy films
- Films with misleading DVD covers
- Films with misleading titles
- American films
- Cash grabs
- 2010s films
- Films reviewed by SaberSpark
- Direct-to-video films
- Obscure films
- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible