St Bernadette of Lourdes

Unrated

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4 of 5

I generally consider it unwise to do a movie with a cast of -only- children.  Occasionally, there's a child actor who knows what they're doing, but most of the time, people just don't have any faith in all-child casts, and so, a film like this one would wind up with very poor sets or costume-design, or with several lousy shots, which could have been done over, to make them look better, and while I will admit that many of the children in this movie are clearly reading from cue-cards, I was surprised by just how many of the key players in the piece were convincing.

Bernadette, to start with, and the skeptic, the priest, and although he played a somewhat cliche part, I though the police commissioner did a fine job acting it out.  Some actors were truly bad, and others just average, but there were just enough good ones, and in the right places, that the movie is enjoyable nonetheless.

As for the rest, I was genuinely shocked by how good the costumes and sets were.  For the most part, they actually looked convincing, which is hard to do when you're dressing kids up as military guards or saracens.  I was particularly impressed with the scene, near the very beginning, of dozens of kids, all dressed up as saracen invaders and Charlemagne's troops, charging each other from either side of a field, and battling it out as best they could.  Clearly, some significant manpower, and expense for costuming was needed to put just that one scene together, and it wasn't lost on me.

There is a narrator, but only briefly at the beginning and end of the film, so I didn't mind him so much.  What surprised me, though, was that while there is humor in the movie from time to time, it doesn't generally play up the humor of having an all-child cast, preferring to play the story almost completely straight, regardless, and here's the weird part; it actually does a pretty good job of that.

The sight of kids in nun outfits, or wearing soldier's uniforms did throw me off just a bit, but not as much as I might have expected it to.  I'd like to give it a slightly-less-than-perfect grade, but to be honest, it's amazing they were able to do so much with the cast they had.  I was very impressed, overall.