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Creation Has Potential, Doesn't Evolve

Critics agree Paul Bettany shines, but premise falls mostly flat

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 22, 2010 10:23 AM CST

(Newser) – Critics agree that on paper, Creation has a lot going for it. But they don't think the flick delivers the thrill of Charles Darwin's groundbreaking work:

"Director Jon Amiel has reduced a crucial moment in science to a Lifetime weepie about a workaholic who needs personal tragedy to wake him up to his wife's virtues," Peter Travers writes in Rolling Stone. The fact that stars Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly are married in real life "adds surprisingly little zest."

Not so, counters Mick LaSalle. It's the "kind of casting that doesn't always work, but it does here," he writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. Elsewhere, "the filmmakers' effort to keep the science/religion argument easy and pure renders it stacked and simple."
"What begins as a multilayered tale of scientific discovery and cultural history gets reduced to a single maudlin idea," Noel Murray writes for the Onion AV Club: "that even Charles Darwin had to evolve."
Great director, great premise, great cast, especially Bettany. But "some questions just can't be answered by science, and the quandary of why Creation is so poundingly dull is one of them," writes Stephanie Zacharek of Salon,

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Paul Bettany is shown in a scene from "Creation." (AP Photo)

Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly are shown in a scene from "Creation." (AP Photo)

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 13 comments

krymsonkyng

Jan 25, 2010 8:55 AM CST

The Bible is a book "written by the divinely inspired" (that's like saying based on a true story). Consider outside evidence AS WELL, if there's to be a discussion. If not, enjoy your brand of fundamentalism.

sanagalrc

Jan 23, 2010 5:35 AM CST

For example, Galileo's was just reversed like 10 years ago.

Suzylnn

Jan 23, 2010 1:44 AM CST

If evolution were true, then the Bible’s account of the creation of the first man, Adam, would be a story not intended to be taken literally. (Genesis 1:26, 27; 2:18-24) Is that how Jesus viewed this Bible account? “Did you not read,” said Jesus, “that he who CREATED them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? Therefore, what God has yoked together let no man put apart.”—Matthew 19:4-6. Jesus was here quoting from the CREATION account recorded in Genesis chapter 2. If Jesus believed the first marriage to be a fictional story, would he have made reference to it to support his teaching on the sanctity of marriage? Jesus pointed to the Genesis account because he knew it to be true history.—John 17:17. Adam being created Jesus’ disciples believed the Genesis account of creation. Luke’s Gospel account traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam. (Luke 3:23-38) If Adam were a fictional character, at what point would this genealogical list have turned from fact to myth? If the rootstock of this family tree were mythological, how firm would that have made Jesus’ claim that he was the Messiah, born in the line of David? (Matthew 1:1) The Gospel writer Luke said that he had “traced all things from the start with accuracy.” Clearly, he believed the creation account in Genesis.—Luke 1:3.

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Entertainment • Science

entertainment • evolution • film • movie review • Charles Darwin • period drama • Jennifer Connelly • Paul Bettany • Jon Amiel • Origin of Species • Creation review • Creation (film)

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Creation Has Potential, Doesn't Evolve

Critics agree Paul Bettany shines, but premise falls mostly flat