Joshua and the Promised Land

Joshua and the Promised Land
"No... NOOOO!" — Moses
Genre: Animation Adventure Religion Directed by: Jim Lion Written by: Jim Lion Starring: Jonathan Dauerrman Harland Greene Kerry Orrman Nick Vetter Jim Lion Photography: Color Distributed by: Fountain Distribution Release date: November 1, 2004 Runtime: 55 minutes Country: United States

Joshua and the Promised Land is a 2004 low-budget CGI film about a young, anthropomorphic lion traveling back in time and living out the adventures of the biblical Joshua so he can learn a lesson about courage.

Plot

After the death of Moses, God calls on Joshua to lead the Israelites across the Jordan River and take possession of the promised land. God guarantees victory in the military campaign and vows never to leave the Israelites so long as they obey his laws.

Why It's A Disaster Of Biblical Proportions

1. Atrocious CGI animation that is way standards of when it was released (the biggest offender of this movie, by the way), when compared to the animation by Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky. And the texture from the film are downright ugly.
2. The character models are terrible as they all look naked and unfinished with their creepy facial expressions.
3. There's a lot of clipping that you'll notice. For example, when Joshua sits on his bed, you'll see clipping in his stomach.
4. Despite the fact that the characters are lions, they have no tails nor paws, which looks very strange. Their manes also lack any sign of life. In reality, lion manes are very bushy and would be waving around a bit in the wind. Here, their manes look more like potatoes with lion faces and ears glued on.
5. The lip-syncing is very poor. As the characters' mouths often just randomly open and close with no sense of what they're actually meant to be saying.
6. The soundtrack is bland and tries to be biblical.
7. Hilariously bad dialogue. Particularly Moses' "No... NOOOO!" (although it also doubles as a redeeming quality due to it's meme status and it coming off as hilarious due to how stupid and ridiculous it is).
8. The voice acting is absolutely abysmal and downright laughable. None of the voice actors sound like they tried and most of the voice acting comes off as either obnoxious or even random shouting as a result.
9. It heavily insults the Book of Joshua. As it shows little to no faith towards it's source material due to being filled with a cast of annoying characters, having it's story feature completely nonsensical events, and treating it's tragic demographic like idiots.
   • Also, the film itself feels nonexistent and doesn't know who it's made for.
10. Horrible editing that causes the scenes, transition shots, and characters' movements to not just look unnatural, but also even a bit creepy at times.
11. The narrator is a just a floating purple cat-pig monstrosity whose mouth barely moves when he talks, which is very unsettling.
12. It took four years to make this. You could easily see that other animators take less than that long to make actual decent animation.
13. The concept of an anthropomorphic lion learning about courage is very clichéd and unoriginal, as other films have already done the concept, such as The Lion King.
14. The movie poster is disturbing.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Moses: "No!... NOOOO!"
2. Chris, Joshua's guardian angel, actually gives a decent performance. Unlike the other vocal performances.
3. The animation is so bad that at times it's actually hilarious. One example is when Joshua is chasing the quails in order to get dinner.
4. The film's creator, Jim Lion, admits that it's horrible and agrees with all the criticisms against it, which goes to show that he can actually take criticism, even though he doesn't regret making it, as it gave him an opportunity to practice his animation skills. This means that mistakes will eventually lead to improvement.
5. Saberspark, along with many animators, have made a fan remake of this movie, in which the animation is considered by many to be a huge improvement over the original as seen in the trailer.
6. Overall, this movie is just so bad, it's hilarious.

Trivia

• The "No!... Noooo!" scene gained meme status.

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