Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Journey to Bethlehem’ on Netflix, Where The Nativity Story Meets ‘Glee’

Journey to Bethlehem (now on Netflix) takes The Greatest Story Ever Told and merges it with The Greatest Showman, which is something we always never knew we wanted, right? Um. Sure? So brace yourselves for a singing-and-dancing musical version of Mary and Joseph’s trek down the burro trail to the humble hay-ridden birthplace of Jesus himself, with Antonio Banderas turning up to play mean ol’ King Herod. Adam Anders, whose songwriting and music production credits range from Glee to High School Musical and Hannah Montana, directs the movie, and that pretty much gives away the goofy, lightweight tone here. But is it joyous, or just blasphemous? 

JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY, reads the opening title card, so this movie is already hilarious. We meet three wisemen – Caspar (Rizwan Manji), Balthazar (Geno Segers) and Melchior (Omid Djalili) – and as the designated comic relief, they certainly are wisecracking wiseasses. They spot the exceptionally brilliant star in the sky they’ve been waiting their entire lives to see, and immediately pack up the gold and frankincense and myrrh for a long journey. Please note, from this point on, you will be subject to more myrrh jokes than you could ever dream of. Must’ve been an entire writer’s room dedicated just to the myrrh jokes! 

Meanwhile, in Nazareth, Mary (Fiona Palomo) is super-pissed at her parents for betrothing her to some stranger. I mean, she wants to be a teacher, not some j-hole’s wife. Mary’s sisters take her to the square to go shopping and blow off some steam, and here she meets a cute guy with pretty good hair who claims to be an expert at handling fruit. Well then! He won’t back down even though she’s betrothed and when she runs off he says he didn’t get her name, which tells us he wasn’t paying attention to an earlier song, which included the lyric “Mary Mary Mary Mary,” and rhymed it with “contrary” and “secondary.” 

Later, the two families stage the first meeting of Mary and her hubs-to-be, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s – gasp – the fruit guy! His name is Joseph (Milo Manheim), and Mary’s mad that he didn’t tell her he, too, was betrothed. Betrothal is absolutely something that must be disclosed, per unofficial Year Zero-era social contracts, you know. He’s not too hot on being betrothed, either. He wants to be an inventor, a profession with such great promise. I mean, just think of all the things that hadn’t been invented yet – computers, industrial agriculture, rechargeable nose trimmers, free will, birth control. So many things! 

Our not-so-happy couple hasn’t even walked down the aisle before they run into their biggest bone of contention, and I know that’s a major phrasing issue, but let’s just move on: Mary’s visited by the angel Gabriel (Lecrae), who floats into her room and hits his head on the doorway – no, really – just like that one Stormtrooper did, before revealing that she’s destined to carry the son of the Lawd. Well, shit. Nobody believes her, and Joseph ain’t too keen on being a resident of Cuck City, so she’s exiled to a barren stretch of desert to live with relatives. Not to give anything away, but if Mary and Joseph ever make up – and I can neither confirm nor deny that they do! – I’m sure this’ll be a great story to tell their grandchildren.

Elsewhere, in Jerusalem, the guy who voices Puss in Boots hams it up as King Herod, and busts out into a song that’s way too much like “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” from The Lion King. When he catches wind that someone’s about to give birth to another king in his country, he declares that the baby king should be slaughtered. As we recover from tonal whiplash, we meet Herod’s unfortunately named son, Antipater (the unfortunately named Joel Smallbone), who isn’t so sure about killing a baby, and therefore is torn between loyalty and sanity. Will Joseph forgive Mary? Will they survive King Herod’s tyranny? Will the child leap from her loins wearing tap shoes? NO SPOILERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I already made the hacky Greatest joke, so let’s see what else we can come up with. How about this: Journey to Bethlehem is like The Nativity Story crossed with Aladdin.

Performance Worth Watching: There’s lots of generic singing and acting happening here, so thankfully we have Banderas to spice things up with some heavily eyelinered eyerolls and a goodly amount of campy gesticulating. 

Memorable Dialogue: Melchior: “My clothes smell of sheep dung. My skin smells of sheep dung. This whole earth is made of sheep dung. And tonight, I meet the son of God. This is just perfect!”

Sex and Skin: We know how that baby got in there, so, none, of course. It’s only logical.

Our Take: Journey to Bethlehem ends with another title card, all but apologizing for “taking creative license” with the story, so at least it ends with another good laugh. Maybe I should apologize for my sacrilegious tone here, but it’s kinda in step with the tone of the movie, which takes a story that’s rather serious to many and renders it rather silly. To illustrate the level of subtlety here: Joseph, torn between believing and disbelieving Mary’s virgin-pregnancy story, dreams of two sides of himself sing-fighting, rhyming “immaculate conception” with “ultimate deception.” It symbolizes his inner conflict, see. See? See?!?

The movie is glossy and cheap-looking, like a TV-production crew parked outside Yuma for three weeks to stage small-scale musical numbers with voguing Roman centurions and Banderas dressed two-thirds the way to clowndom. The songs are glossy generipop sprinkled with old standards like “Silent Night,” and it all sounds like something you’d hear performed by the Hooray for Everything troupe in a mall in 1985, as opening act for a Casual Corner fashion show. Anders avoids a cliche or two – we don’t get a scene of Mary screaming as Joseph implores her to PUUUUUSHHHHH, but we do get a shot of her beloved pet donkey pacing outside the manger, which is a bummer, because I was hoping he’d deliver the baby – but steps in a dozen others, ranging from a bevy of cornball jokes to far too many watery ballads. I’ve therefore concluded that we’re definitely not supposed to take any of this seriously. Not for a second. 

Our Call: The faithful will be torn between appreciating Journey to Bethlehem’s lighthearted cutesiness and believing it’s just not religious enough to do the story justice. I can only speak for myself though, and I got enough giggles out of this ridiculousness to justify imploring y’all to STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.