c. 1998 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _”Get all the advice you can, and you will succeed, without it you will fail,”says the biblical book of Proverbs.

The honchos at DreamWorks SKG, it seems, are paying close attention.

The studio has covered just about every Judeo-Christian-Islamic base possible before releasing its much anticipated animated feature about the life of Moses,”The Prince of Egypt.” Surely, DreamWorks’ Steven Spielberg, known for tackling such sensitive subjects as African-American history (“The Color Purple,””Amistad”) and the Holocaust (“Schindler’s List”), is no stranger to controversy.

And neither is Jeffrey Katzenberg, Spielberg’s partner who reigned at Walt Disney Studios when it produced the animated feature”Aladdin,”which drew harsh criticism from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

The committee was upset with what they called the film’s stereotyping of a minor character and song lyrics that described the film’s setting as a place”where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face.”Disney agreed to change the lyrics in the video and subsequent releases of the film.

So when it comes to making films based on the Bible, no one at DreamWorks _ including Spielberg and Katzenberg who along with David Geffen make up the trinity that founded the fledgling studio _ wanted to risk offending the religious sensibilities of followers of the world’s three great monotheistic faiths.

DreamWorks contacted more than 350 religious scholars and leaders from around the world to view parts of the film to make suggestions. Muslim advisers, Vatican officials, rabbis, Egyptologists _ even former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell _ weighed in with input, leaving no biblical stones unturned.”I think they were trying to cast their net as broadly as possible,”said David A. Lehrer, L.A.’s regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, who was contacted by DreamWorks early in the film’s production.

DreamWorks’ proverbial net also included Maher M. Hathout, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California and senior adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council.”My role was to see the product from an Islamic eye. The story (of Moses) is abundantly mentioned in the Koran and my role is to project that version,”said Hathout, adding that DreamWorks has requested that consultants not discuss details of the film.

Not surprisingly, DreamWorks won’t comment much on the”The Prince of Egypt”either.

This much is known.”The Prince of Egypt”is a serious animated film producers hope earns a PG rating so more adults will see it.”This is not a movie that parents can drop their kids off at for the afternoon,”Sandra Rabins, one of the film’s producers, told The Los Angeles Times.”Parents need to be prepared to answer tough questions. Is God an angry God? Why does he allow slavery? Why does he kill? This is not a movie for toddlers.””The Prince of Egypt,”whose budget is reportedly between $60 million and $70 million, includes a computer-generated plague of 7 million locusts, huge crowd shots, and, or course, the parting of the Red Sea, a complex, four-minute scene that took 12 people three years to create, according to The Times.

It features six new songs by Academy Award-winning lyrist Stephen Schwartz (“Pocahontas”) and opens with the number”Deliver Us”as baby Moses floats down the Nile in a reed basket.

The movie also boasts an all-star cast including the voices of Val Kilmer as Moses, Ralph Fiennes as the Pharaoh Rameses, Jeff Goldblum as Moses’ brother Aaron, Sandra Bullock as his sister Miriam, and Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife Tzipporah. The voice of God, however, is still in the works, a combination of voice, sound effects and music.”Our ambition is to remove the gender. We don’t want it to sound like James Earl Jones,”producer Penney Finkelman Cox told The Times.

It’s set to hit screens nationwide December 18.

But despite slick special effects and celebrity voiceovers,”The Prince of Egypt”is serious stuff. So serious, in fact, that DreamWorks has no plans for the fast-food tie-ins and spin-off merchandise usually associated with animated features.

Instead, DreamWorks is developing study guides for the film, one for each of the major faith groups, The Times said.

Still, if troubles surrounding past animated biblical stories are any indication, even with all the research and consulting”The Prince of Egypt”could, possibly, raise a few eyebrows.

In 1985, Christian Century magazine and others criticized Hanna-Barbera’s”The Greatest Adventures: Stories from the Bible”as too violent for young children and pointed to the serie’s lapses in historical detail.

And later, when Rich Animation Studios (creators of”The Swan Princess”) produced two animated video series based on the Bible, the Anti-Defamation League took issue with the sinister-looking Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest in”Animated Stories from the New Testament.” Rich Animation quickly reanimated the character and changed some of his dialogue.”We took action and responded to their comments. We thought they were well founded,”said Barbara Beasley, senior vice president of marketing at Nest Entertainment, Inc., Rich’s parent company.”I think it’s a good idea that (DreamWorks) is going through that type of review,”Beasley said.”It will make their product more universal.” But by attempting to please all does DreamWorks run the risk of pleasing none?”I think that’s always the danger you take,”said the Rev. Francis Maniscalco, director of communications for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and its social policy arm, the U.S. Catholic Conference, who was part of a small group of Catholic leaders invited to view some of the movie’s early rough cuts.”It seems to me they’ve chosen the workshop approach because they see that as important for future productions,”he said.

DreamWorks is extending the dialogue to the Vatican, where the Pontifical Council for Social Relations will also have an opportunity to comment on the movie, according to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Ultimately, however, final approval remains with theatergoers.

Meanwhile, the ADL’s Lehrer has already given his imprimatur.”I’m really not comfortable characterizing it, but it’s certainly impressive,”he said.

MJP END ALEISS