Beyond dreadful. No excuse. They clearly spent money on the film, but spent no thought whatsoever.

Wait - let's start with the positives: Most of the sets are decent, and some of the background extras actually look like they are middle eastern - so let's give it one star for the sets, props, and extras. Also, the costumes are nice enough, although amazingly clean and well pressed. The only other redeeming thing I can think of, is some of the musical scoring was at least vaguely from the region. The rest was much like the scoring to a 1940's romantic drama. That is about all I can say except...

This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Ever. Ever, ever, ever.

I hardly know where to start... the British voice as the Angel? The stilted performances of just about everyone? Herod as played by an itchy stand up comic? The 12 year old Jesus as played by some kid from the San Fernando Valley? The hunky, tan, blond John the Baptist, who looked like he wandered in from a Tarzan movie (furry loincloth an all!)? The adult Jesus getting snotty with his mother in the water into wine scene? Or maybe it was the overall effect of so many choppy scenes? The flat, one dimensional characters? The dreadful dialogue? The complete lack of direction? (I don't care what the director's resume is - he was clearly not on the set except to pick up his check)

Herod's death scene actually had me laughing out loud it was so absurd. Joseph's funeral scene, on the other hand, came out of nowhere - uh, was Joseph sick? Since he appeared to be in his late 30's, tops, what killed him? The last supper reminded me of a bunch of snotty young men sitting around whispering about "who farted?". The crucifixion scene was... indescribably bad. How did they manage to shoot the death of Jesus without any dramatic tension or real feeling? The random decent actor who managed to make this terrible script seem remotely real just served to make all the others look even worse.

If you showed this film to someone who had not already a decent grasp of the gospel story, a viewer would be utterly lost -there is no coherent story line! Also I'm not sure why this was called "Mary of Nazareth" since it's about Jesus, not his Mother Mary. She's absent from MANY scenes, and no attempt was made at all to explore what her point of view/life might have been like.

Oh, and by the way - the "other" Mary (Mary of Magdalene) is easy to identify - unlike any other woman in the movie, she has bright red hair, lip liner and mascara. So we'd know she was a WHORE I guess, despite the fact that this movie was made in 1999, and almost all biblical scholars agree Mary M was NOT a whore at all.

This film was so terrible I had to look it up to make sure this was a real movie and not an elaborate hoax. I'm not kidding. It's that bad.

There are many fine gospel based films - this is assuredly NOT one of them.