possumopossum

The first time I saw this movie was when they showed it on television when I was in high school. I couldn't tear myself away from it until I had seen it all. Charlton Heston will forever be synonymous with Moses because of this picture. Much of this picture is conjecture since, as stated early in the movie, the Scriptures don't tell many details about Moses's life up until he boldly went to Pharoh and demanded, "Let my people go." But it is a gripping picture. I do think, though that this movie should have been titled EXODUS rather than the movie that later bore that title, because it seemed that the part where Moses actually brought down the Ten Commandments from the mountain was glossed over. It seemed as if there was more emphasis on the struggle to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt than on the Ten Commandments. Call it THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, call it EXODUS. Still a gripping picture that everyone should see at least once in their life.

Nowadays, it seems that on the rare occasion that television gets a good show, they make viewers play detective trying to find it; an exercise that gets old in a hurry. This show had so many starts and stops and schedule changes, I got frustrated trying to keep up with it. So I waited until the DVD came out before I watched the whole thing. This is some good stuff here. Very indicative of post 9/11. How likely is it, though, that what is left of civilization will coalesce in a small town in Kansas? And how likely is it that terrorists will be able to pull off that clean of a coordinated attack on all our major cities? It does make for some interesting speculation and entertaining television. It also makes you think and makes you realize that we have to stay vigilant if we want to prevent this from happening in real life. Do we have the stomach for it? Think about it.

The first time I saw this, I didn't laugh too much. At the time, I was only about fifteen years old and thought that maybe some of the deeper humor was too mature for me to understand at the time. I had the same reaction when I viewed it a second time a few months ago, and this time, it was because Felix's aborted suicide attempt at the beginning of the movie kind of darkened the movie a bit. This scene made some of the things Oscar said and did to Felix later in the movie seem needlessly cruel, and their personality clashes weren't as amusing as they could have been. Had I not already known the story, I would have been worried that some of Oscar's antics to Felix might push him over the edge. As it was, it didn't make me laugh or smile like the television show with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall did. Still, all in all, a pretty good movie and it spawned one of the greatest sitcoms on television. 7 out of 10.