Growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, my childhood consisted of many animated movies. From Pixar classics like Toy Story, Bug’s Life, and The Lion King, to Nickelodeon movies like The Rugrats, made me assume that animated movies (or cartoon movies is what they were called at my house) were only for children. I believed animated movies couldn’t carry deep plot lines and have rich dialogue, but could only follow that hackneyed three set plot sequence; characters are introduced, characters face a problem, characters resolve the problem. It wasn’t until I watched The Prince of Egypt when I was proven wrong.

Released in 1998, The Prince of Egypt is drama/musical film based on the biblical book of Exodus. The movie follows Moses as he transitions from being the prince of Egypt to being the leader of the enslaved Jews, who ultimately leads the Jews out of Egypt.

The fact that this movie is an animation helped me focus more on the movie, rather on than the actors. After watching the movie, I saw in the credits that the voice cast was made up of major actors, such as Steve Martin, Ralph Fiennes, and Martin Short. I have an aversion to movies that incorrectly cast actors. For example, if the movie is a Biblical adaptation set in the middle east there needs to middle eastern actors. I know for a fact that if I this movie was live action, with the same actors, I would not have even watched it. So kudos to Jeffrey Katzenberg for choosing animation! 

This music in this movie was phenomenal. I’m not a huge musical fan, but Hans Zimmer composed a beautiful score for this film. I’m still singing “Deliver Us” and “Through Heaven’s Eyes”, along with other feature songs, so thank you Stephen Schwartz for writing those.

My assumption that all animated movies are only for children has been thrown in the garbage. The movie touched on themes such as torn families, dominant societies, caste systems, and faith with divine intervention. This movie has encouraged me to look at each movie type -live action, animated, silent, etc- equally. Every movie is trying to teach its audience something, no matter how it’s presented.