Zachary Levi on THE STAR’s Message of ‘True Hope, Peace, and Joy’
By Movieguide® Staff
As Christmas approaches, Movieguide® recognizes the movies and TV that keep Christ in Christmas, like 2017’s Movieguide® Award-winner, THE STAR.
Actor Zachary Levi plays the voice of Joseph in THE STAR, the uplifting, faith-filled animated movie about the birth of Jesus Christ.
“It’s the story of redemption, a story of hope, and true peace and true joy and an actual love and reconciliation with our Creator,” Levi told Movieguide®. “I mean, I personally relate to all that stuff.”
A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:
THE STAR is a wonderful, hilarious, deeply reverential animated family movie centered on the birth of Jesus, but from the perspective of a lowly donkey named Bo. Bo and his best friend, Dave the dove, have dreams of joining the royal parade. When Bo escapes his owner’s clutches, he finds himself accompanying a pregnant Mary and her husband Joseph on their way to Bethlehem. Bo may be a part of a bigger adventure than he expected. However, the evil King Herod has his top soldier looking for the pregnant Mary.
THE STAR is tremendous fun, with wonderful lessons along the way. A touching story from a unique perspective, THE STAR sets itself apart from many of the other nativity movies. Obviously, the movie condenses and shifts a few incidents found in the Bible, but never sacrifices a very strong biblical Christian theology. However, the movie deftly balances the goofy fun of the animals with a deeply redemptive reverence for God and the birth of Jesus Christ. Overall, THE STAR is almost void of objectionable content. It’s a must-see Christmas movie for everyone.
Levi, also known for SHAZAM! and AMERICAN UNDERDOG, said that he believes more faith-based movies should strive for the same level of quality and effort as THE STAR.
“It’s an incredible artisanal team brought together by a big studio force like Sony… I just think there are a lot of faith-based films that just aren’t very good at all. I commend that they want to put their messaging out, good, positive messaging,” he told Movieguide®, “but you can have a really beautiful message wrapped up in crap packaging and nobody cares about the message at that point.
“It’s unfortunate because I think that if faith-based movie makers and faith-based audiences really want to start doing that and making it happen it’s got to be like this [THE STAR]. You got to make something that’s good, that has really a-plus teams working on it and animators and writers and directors and producers and actors.”