YYou know the way Dracula likes to give a dramatic speech, then turn into a bat and fly away? It turns out that the angel Gabriel does something similar, except he turns into a blue scarf, the same fancy number you get as a birthday present for your mother in monsoons. Rush! He goes away. Unfortunately, Gabriel as Knitwear is about as entertaining as it gets in this fairly straightforward biblical adaptation of the early years of Mary, mother of Christ.

Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Anthony Hopkins as Herod understands the mission and shouts lines like “KNEEEEEEEEL!” with the necessary enthusiasm. However, we’ve seen him serve more flavorful hams before, in elaborate dishes like the sequels “Silence of the Lambs” and “Hannibal” and “Red Dragon”; This is more Ham-Lite, the kind of villainy Hopkins can deliver in his sleep. Not that it isn’t fun to watch, but his Herod could have used at least twice as much screen time as he gets.

The titular Mary (Noa Cohen) is a bit annoying and prone to piety statements like “I delight in the mysteries of the Lord every day.” Fair enough, she is the future Mother of God. But when she tells a man who has just been brutally blinded by Herod that “vision comes in many forms,” you can see how people end up becoming so violently anti-religion. A very late departure from the vernacular of Marvel heroes: “Maybe you think you know my story. “Trust me, you’re not doing that” – it doesn’t help matters either. However, it comes right after the film’s best scene, in which the Christ child is saved from the swords of Herod’s servants as Bethlehem burns and our heroes escape the raging inferno on horseback. There is also a good passage where Mary is told to put the baby Jesus in a wicker basket and throw him from the roof.

Unfortunately, you have to listen to a lot of turgid Bible study dramatizations of Bible passages to get to the good stuff. All in all, last year’s “Journey to Bethlehem,” a musical starring Antonio Banderas and Herod that covers the same material, offers more bang for your biblical buck.