The Basic Plot in Five Words or Less: Judah Ben-Hur lives wacky life.
My Basic Ramblings: This is the most Academy Award-decorated movie in history, winning eleven statues in various categories, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Will Titanic beat this impressive record? (Answer: Not if I have anything to do with it.)
Charlton Heston stars in this picture, and I kept expecting him to shout "Soylent Green is people!" or something Planet of the Apes or NRA-related. I realize that this movie was filmed waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before any of the others, but when you have the advantage of hindsight you can do things like that.
I'm assuming that if you're reading this review, you've seen the film, so I will forgo plot explanation and just kinda jump in, as I am wont to do.
It would appear that the whole moral of this movie is to make sure the tiles on your roof are safely secured. Get Steve & Norm from This Old House up there to replace any loose ones, so if you're standing up there watching a parade of Roman soldiers, you don't knock them down and kill a soldier and get arrested and sit in a prison for five years and get leprosy but be miraculously cured of it when Jesus dies.
Life kinda sucks for Ben-Hur after a while, after he's in prison and put to work rowing in a galley. (Ships suck in movies. They either sink or get blown up or you die while rowing them.) He loses his name, he's called "41" (which, since he's sitting in the middle of a row of three, works out properly), and he has to row and row and row while Quintus Arrius decides to play "Let's See How Fast We Can Get These Guys to Row Before They Die from Exhaustion." The ship is sunk in a battle, but Ben-Hur saves Arrius when the ship sinks by pulling him onto a piece of paneling, proving that Titanic is nothing but a big evil rip-off.
Speaking of Ben-Hur and Titanic, both involve scenes with big huge crowds. However, Ben-Hur used real actors and real crowds, not fancy-dancy computer generated people. A real director, like William Wyler, has the patience and the talent to direct large groups of people. 'Parently ol' Jimmy couldn't be bothered to try and get real people, 'cause he had to spend all of his $75 trillion budget buying lacy underthings for Kate Winslet's character.
So Ben-Hur returns to Judea (after Arrius makes him his surrogate son) because he [Ben-Hur] wants to kill Messala (his boyhood friend who turned into Evil Roman Guy who imprisoned his mom and sister) and he runs into one of the Three Wise Men and eventually there's a big chariot race.
The chariot race reminded me a bit of Grease (which will be reviewed soon), since the bad guy had the hubcaps of his chariot/car fitted with evil spiky things that ripped through chariot wood/car metal in order to win.
There's a bit of urban legend that a stuntman was killed during the filming of the chariot race, but apparently this is not true. It is true, however, that a stuntman and several horses were killed in the 1920's silent movie version of this film. But not having seen that version, I couldn't say if it was true or not.
So Ben-Hur wins the race and Messala is turned into The Human Scab and in his last breath tells Ben-Hur that his mother and sister are alive, to find them in the Valley of the Lepers. (Esther, the slave Ben-Hur loves, told him they were dead. They wanted it that way.)
How do you know if a Valentine is from a leper? The tongue's in the envelope.
Leprosy must've sucked. Everyone avoids you, you live alone, random parts of your body fall off. (Actually, it doesn't sound that bad, except for the body parts falling off part.) Esther visits Mom and Sis Ben-Hur occasionally, bringing them food. Ben-Hur shows up and everyone's upset. They bring Mom and Sis to see Jesus get arrested and sentenced and crucified. (Jesus figures in throughout the entire story, though they only show Him from the back, out of respect, I guess. The actor isn't even listed in the credits. He does have nice hair, though.)
Mom and Sis are cured of their leprosy. Big happy ending, except for Jesus. (Yeah, I know, Jesus rises from the dead in wonderful Easter glory, but the movie ends before that.)
I watched this on laser disc, letterboxed. The aspect ratio was something insane like 2.67 to 1, which means the black bars were almost as big as the picture. They don't make movies like that anymore. The original trailer followed; someone should do a paper on the history of movie trailers, they've changed so much. Hmm.......