With “Noah,” director Darren Aronofsky tried to add drama and action to a universally recognized parable. But with mismatching elements from different sections of the Biblical scripture, coupled with subplots pulled out of thin air, the movie turned out to be a wash.

The Biblical blockbuster, starring Russell Crowe as Noah and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Naahmeh, begins with a brief background of the Creation Story. This sequence explains how Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, had three sons named Cain, Abel and Seth.

Eventually, Cain killed Abel, and the cities he started bred human wickedness and sin. Only the descendants of Seth were free from evil, and it would be their responsibility to restore goodness.

The movie then flashes forward ten generations to Noah, a descendant of Seth, who lives with his family outside of the main society of Cain’s cities. In a dream, Noah is shown the mountain where his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) lives, and then thousands of people drowning in an immense flood.

Noah takes this as a sign from the creator, and goes to see Methuselah to ask what the dream means. It’s there that he determines the creator intends to wash the earth of human’s depravity and begin again.

With the help of the Watchers — fallen angels who originally came to earth to try to help Adam — Noah begins preparing for the flood. However, along the way, he faces the challenges of the outside world, issues with his family and his own internal struggle about fulfilling his promises to the creator.

Though these cinematic complications were included in attempts to make the movie an epic, the original story of Noah has few of them. For one, the Watchers, who play key roles in the construction and protection of the ark in the film, are from a completely separate part of the Bible.

Still, the visual effects used to create the Watchers, giant figures encrusted in rocks, were spectacular. The use of CGI was abundant in the film — How else could you show all the animals on earth congregating in one place? — but was calculated and impressive all-around.

It is unclear where Aronofsky got the inspiration for these changes to the most fundamental aspects of the story. If he was attempting to send a message or promote a theme about morality, it wasn’t made consistently or clearly.

Crowe was very good as his typical crass and blunt character, but it was the opposite of how Noah is classically portrayed. In fact, during one scene, the family has the option to save scores of people from drowning, but Noah lets them die. In the original story, Noah invites people onto the ark before the flood, instead of having to fight to keep them off, as shown in one of the movie’s longer sequences. While Noah is normally seen as benevolent, Crowe played a man who had gone seemingly mad with power.

The rest of Noah’s clan was satisfactory, but unspectacular. Though the script was well written, mirroring the kind of speech found in the Bible, it didn’t allow for the actors to show their skills. Connelly seemed rightfully intimidated by Noah, but wasn’t able to show any confidence, even when disagreeing with her husband. Emma Watson, who played the family’s adopted daughter, Ila, was strong-willed, but was not given a lot of screen time. Every other member of the cast filled their role and nothing more.

Even with the artistic licenses Aronofsky took, “Noah” was still boring as a whole. The film lasted nearly two and a half hours, and much of that time was filled with minute complexities that made the plot too busy. The film moved from issue to issue so often that it felt like there were six or seven movies crammed into one.

It was noble to recreate and energize a classic story, but for all its changes, flat acting and boring storyline, “Noah” didn’t hold water.

Published on April 9, 2014 at 1:00 am