I am not a Bible thumper, but I would like to take a Bible and thump someone on the head with it--namely those who wrote this script. 'Noah" is an imagining of the biblical story (not a reimagining because the Bible really doesn't have much to say about the flood story that people really want to know--the mechanics of it).

My goal was to go into the theater considering this film to be separate work from the book (as I do with all films). If you pretend you know nothing of the original text, I am afraid this story does not stand well on its own.

First of all, you would expect that Noah would be the hero of the story. Actually, he was about the least likable character in the film.

Noah is a man who has what he takes to be revelatory dreams. Through them, he predicts future happenings and modifies his life accordingly. But he is a very bad "prophet", because he never seems sure he understood the messages. The most dramatic part of the film is when he tries to understand what the creator's intentions are for the race of man. He thinks he knows, and he makes bombastic speeches about it, but he obviously is not sure. Still, he acts on his best suspicions--or intends to act. When it comes down to it, he wavers. And a teenage girl has to explain to him the basics of free will.

If you were hoping for some interesting explanations about the mechanics of the ark and how all those animals were saved, you will be disappointed. The explanation we get is like saying that Santa Claus manages to visit all the homes around the world in an impossibly short time because he has magic reindeer. In the story, Noah has helpers that are no less magical. And the depiction of every species of animal that crawls, walks or flies (since this story does not consider evolution, none of the species could have evolved after the flood) is very lame. I don't know what I expected, but it was something more realistic.

I found the acting to be fine. The most enjoyable aspect of the film for me was Emma Watson's performance.

The special effects were okay. But not enough to make me forget the deficiencies in the story.

I never had any intention of watching this but it showed up on Netflix and so I gave it a shot. What a mess of a movie. First of all we need to throw out the whole Noah fairy tale as it is presented in the Bible. If one were to take the time to look, we would see that flood/purification myths existed long before the Old Testament was even a thought in the writer's minds. It was all an evolution of thought to try to come to grips with the reason people are the way they are. This movie is about a guy who, for some reason, becomes God's darling, even though he is so full of ego as to think he knows anything. He goes from being a loving father to being tyrant and, basically, an abuser. At no time in this film are we privy to God "talking" to Noah. He simply decides what the plans are. I'm not talking about the animal thing, which is incredibly ludicrous. God pretty much sticks them on the Ark and then puts them in a kind of suspended animation. Russell Crowe walks around like he is constipated. He is so intent on his own version of how things will be that he turns his back on his family. Yes, he is the provider, and the times would make him unapproachable by his wife and children. He is the grandson of Methuselah (where did they pull that out of?); you know, the guy who lived 900 and some years (good old Anthony Hopkins) and apparently was some sort of conduit to God. Crowe/Noah builds the Ark, a giant box rather than the stereotypical ship with the little house on top that schoolchildren are used to. Anyway, at some point he gets it in his head that his mission is simply to save the animals and he and his family is to die off, ending the reign of man on earth. His daughter in law (sort of),Hermione Granger is impregnated after Hopkin cures her barrenness. So old Noah decides that if the baby is a daughter, he will simply end its life. He has also offended his son Ham (the patron saint of actors) by not saving a young woman he has fallen in love with. Ham spews hatred and has every right to. There is also on board, a stowaway, who is really a Satan, who is going to take over the family by killing Noah (with Ham's help). Ham, of course, to some cultists, is thought to be the reason for races that are inferior. So he is the new Cain, even though he is confused and depressed. The way this all ends is so pathetic. There are implications that are hard to imagine, but, then, it's just a silly version of an equally silly story. Oh, I didn't even mention the rock creatures that were punished by God and eventually helped Noah build the Ark. If there was even a semblance of some sort of classic point here, it ended when these guys showed up. I thought that the John Voight TV miniseries was bad, but this one takes the cake.

NOAH is a Biblical adaptation like no other. Ostensibly telling the famous tale of the guy and his ark, what this in actuality turns out to be is a bizarre, one-off fantasy about warring tribes, rock-men, and family troubles. It's an unwieldy concoction and one which can hardly be called satisfying; a disappointment given the director's track record with the likes of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and BLACK SWAN.

NOAH stars Russell Crowe as the titular character. Crowe plays a guy who is stoic, worthy, and more than a little dull. Just as dull as Jennifer Connolly, who plays his wife. Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth make little impact as the kids, while Emma Watson simply can't act and is mildly embarrassing as the adopted daughter. Anthony Hopkins is in this too, playing the world's oldest man, and he seems to be doing it in an understandably tongue-in-cheek way.

The producers clearly want to make this a film to appeal to secular as well as religious audiences, so the religious stuff is kept to a minimum. There's a lot of CGI animal and water stuff, none of which really impresses, but the really tiresome thing is the way the storyline has to have a human adversary, in the form of Ray Winstone on autopilot. Clearly the end-of-the-world storyline wasn't dramatic enough. I did like the way NOAH flirts with the title character's standing and his moral quandaries, and there's one incredible evolution sequence that reminds one of Aronofsky's raw talent, but other than that, this is a mess.