In a way, I like Biblical epics because I like epics. I like sitting there for three or four hours and immersing myself in a film. However, there begins to be a problem when those three or four hours are not done well. I'm not even talking about how in Cleopatra you can't help noticing Richard Burton is wearing a miniskirt or how it may confound you in The Ten Commandments when the Hebrews start making a golden cow to worship. I mean, God JUST saved them. How did they think that parting the Red Sea thing happened? Or Ben Hur, why is Charlton Heston not pissed off that his girlfriend let him think his wife and sister were dead when they were just lepers? I could go on for hours. The Silver Chalice is amazing in that everything from beginning to end is awful. I would say Paul Newman was good in a bad film, but that's like saying Kobe Bryant got forty points and the Lakers still lost. It's just pointless.
How did our boy get mixed up in this nonsense? Two words: studio system. Paul was a new contract player at Warner Bros and new contract players did not go around saying that they didn't want to be a party to a huge pile of crap. Anyway, guess we better get around to the story since we kind of have to. Paul is a sculptor who was like a slave, then he wasn't, then he was a slave again because Romans are bad. He gets commissioned to make a cover for the Holy Grail, which I never saw in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The grail gets lost, Paul has to go to Rome to look for it and at some point he marries Pier Angeli for reasons I don't get. I mean, I get why she's in it, that's obvious. Meanwhile, there's a crazy magician running around saying he's like Jesus. And that guy is played by Jack Palance. So, really you should be watching City Slickers instead of this crap. There's a baby cow in that movie.
What's bad? Just the costumes, the set design, the dialogue, the story, the pacing... Just everything. I mean, the artwork on that poster is bad. Is this a movie about the Holy Grail or a Harlequin novel? Much to his credit, when this movie was going to be on TV, Paul Newman took out an ad in Variety apologizing for it and telling people not to watch it. It's that bad. So, I mean if you have some time to waste and you and some friends want to mock this movie, you should do that, or you can take my advice and not watch this movie, okay? I'm just trying to save you some time.
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