Review: The Netflix Mary Movie Is Catholic Cringe

When Netflix announced that it was doing a Christmas movie titled Mary, expectations were low, but the film managed to unearth subterranean levels of boredom and cringe. And when viewed as a faith-based film, the story is a massive divination from the account found in Scripture, not simply in the liberties taken with Mary but also with Christ.

On a technical side, the movie is poorly written with the expository dialog doing the majority of the storytelling. Without the various characters telling the viewer what is happening, the audience would not know. Anthony Hopkins gives a brutally poor performance as Herod the Great, a villain so heavy-handed that it ranges on child cartoon. No one else gives a particularly noteworthy performance.

Historically, the film uses a lot of carriages and uses fanciful colors for tents. At times, Mary is riding in the back of a wagon with some sort of Uber driver taking her where she needs to go. These set pieces were more fitting of a western than a period piece of antiquity. Gabriel is unimpressively depicted in a blue robe which is how the characters recall him to one another.

So let’s dive into the liberties with Mary with spoilers.

The film begins Mary’s narration, “You may think you know my story. Trust me, you don’t.”

Being a Catholic film, Mary depicts her birth as a result of God answering her father’s prayers in the wilderness. The answered prayer comes with the insistence that Mary be dedicated to the temple when she is born (although this happens a few years prior to getting pregnant in the film). The film runs with the vestal virgin narrative for Mary, but in fairness to the Papists, this is where the distinctly Catholic liberties end.

Mary is not noticeably depicted as sinless. Joseph is Mary’s age, give or take. It is often a Catholic understanding that Joseph was significantly older which serves as an explanation for why Joseph is not around during the ministry of Christ. This also means that there are no children from a previous marriage of Joseph either. Mary is tempted by Satan and resists long enough to be rescued by Gabriel. 

Joseph is a beta male with little agency of his own. Though a man of few words in Scripture, Joseph is a pushy man of no real conviction who one scene later sees Mary and suddenly has a conviction, but is hardly a depicted as a man of faith. Joseph has no connection to Nazareth or the Davidic line in the movie.

Taking Talmudic influence, Baba ben Buta is a priest in the film who is blinded by Herod with a crown of thorns, only for Herod to freak out at the sight of Mary in the crowd.

But the worst deviations come from the movie’s depiction of the birth of Christ. Because Mary is a vestal virgin and a blabbermouth, her pregnancy was never kept on the down low, so the whole town knew about it. Joseph rather than wrestling with whether to divorce her quietly, publicly confronts the mob who wants to stone her and comes to her rescue instead. Joseph was not told by the angel that Mary was carrying the Messiah and that he was to marry her.

The movie insinuates that the census was Herod’s idea to stop the Messiah, but later seems to credit the Romans. Mary is married prior to giving birth and so they move to Bethlehem where many are gathered, not because of the census.  The people are there to witness the messiah be born yet are unwilling to rent a room to Joseph and Mary for that to happen. Make it make sense.

The Magi are there on Christmas as commonly depicted (a misconception). They never visited Herod to ask for directions to Bethlehem and are merely a part of a flashback.

The next day, Herod resolves to kill the Messiah and dispatches his soldiers to round up the babies. Though they commit murder, the soldiers gather the babies back to Herod so that Herod is yelling at them “Who is the Messiah?” in a hall with a line of babies in bassinets on either side crying. This was certainly a so-bad-it’s-laughable scene.

Joseph did not know what the name of the baby would be until Mary told him. Rather than flee to Egypt, as Scripture depicted, Mary led the Holy Family to Jerusalem to present Christ at the temple. But this occurs after an epic showdown with Herod’s guards who show up to look for Jews hidden underneath the floorboards in a house where Joseph and Mary seek respite. After following the wagon, the soldiers set a landlocked boat on fire along with the rest of the property before going into a house they set ablaze. After two people died, Joseph finally took a heroic stand and became a fisher of men by tossing a flaming net on a soldier.

I wonder who this movie was even made for. It’s too inaccurate for Evangelicals. It’s not reverential enough for Catholics. Fun fact: Joel Osteen was an executive producer of this movie. So perhaps the theologically liberal or vaguely religious person who has never read their Bible, provided they aren’t a history or film buff, is the target audience for this film.

At nearly 2 hours long, Mary is a child rather than a mother of a movie, as though the boredom of The Chosen had a baby with the cringe of Journey To Bethlehem.