I know that it’s been out for a few years, but I finally got around to watching the movie “Noah.” I only watched it because of Russel Crowe. He’s been a favorite actor of mine since “Gladiator.”

Anyway, I read plenty of reviews beforehand. Some were good. Some were bad. All ventured to employ various levels of philosophical – theological – ideological interpretation.

Still, no matter what I read, I did my best to keep an open mind with the film. I really did. It’s just that I struggle with film adaptations of Biblical stories in general. Being an exegetical theologian – that is, someone who studies the texts in the original languages – in my opinion, the folks who produce these films just never seem to bridle the potency of the language and get the stories right. The inclination toward creative liberty is almost always too strong, and with that, they miss so much color and contour, and even more so, the essential substance. You don’t even need to retain the entirety of the theology for the story of a worldwide flood to be a rather gripping cinematographic gem.

Unfortunately, “Noah” was no different than the low-budget wannabe adaptations. The movie was simply terrible.

The acting was horrible. The cinematography was incredibly shallow. The characters were boring. The digital animation was some of the lamest I’ve seen in a while. Well, I did watch a “Barbie” movie with the girls the other night and that was much worse. But not by much. And I wasn’t rooting for Barbie’s demise.

You really have to get the machete of perseverance out in order to cut a trail through this jip and make it to a place where you care even in the least for pointing out that this movie is brimming (as expected) with bad theology, socio-political agendas (Green Peace, PETA, and the like), and plenty of other distracting garbage. And again, all of this hovers dangerously close to the edge of visual obscurity because the movie is just… plain… bad.

In fact, let me offer it this way.

If this were an accurate depiction and I were God, I would have gone ahead and rid the earth of Noah and his family, too. I know, I know. That means going back on the promise to redeem the world through an eventual Messiah, but hey, that’s precisely why I’m not God.

I’ve made better home movies. Truly, I have. Take a look. Here’s one I made some years ago in our old house when my oldest was five years old… Sugar Frosted Chocolate Powder Bombs.

I suppose that the whole experience was made much worse because I was sipping from a bottle of Old Smuggler Blended Scotch Whisky that (according to the one who gave it to me) had been in a cupboard in Maryland since the late 1970s.

He was wrong about the age, though. The tax stamp on the side has the Maryland Comptroller Louis Goldstein’s name on it. This particular tax stamp was used from 1951 to 1971, which means it was around long before the late 70s. And as you can see from the photo that I took before I poured it, the fill line was good and the whisky was clear, suggesting an edition unscathed by the elements. My guess it that the contents were probably pretty close to being as they were when first put there. Thusly, I’m assuming the whisky was just as awful between 1951 and 1971.

The nose is a familiar but ghastly apparition. With the first sniff, I knew I’d smelled something similar in the past. I searched my garage until I discovered it – acetone. Except this stuff adds to the bitterness with a little bit of something sweet. Not sugar. Pixie Stick powder, perhaps. Yeah, that’s it. Pixie Sticks and acetone. That’s exactly what you get with this stuff.

I think it was in the first sip that I actually called call out for God to just go ahead and take Noah down with his vessel. The movie was boring, and so was the whisky. Although smelling like it might be used to remove adhesive residue from pretty much any surface, there’s relatively little flavor to it. It’s plain. Maybe just a little bit of sour alcohol and a slight strewing of buttery oak. But that’s it. I expected more “chemical,” but surprisingly, it wasn’t there.

Is it a medium finish? A long finish? I can’t say for sure.

The first sip seemed long. The next seemed to dissipate much more swiftly. Either way, both burned lengthily enough for the dram to be considered distinctly unpleasant – like the movie “Noah.”