It’s that slavish refusal to detour from the most conservative possible interpretation of such events that ultimately makes One Night With the King little more than a dolled-up, oversimplified sermon.

...visually lavish but dramatically clumsy.

Don't Christians deserve quality? Of course...but they won't find it here.

This is one of those religious epics that looks like a religious epic, which is fine as far as it goes, but misses the mark because it doesn't manage to translate the feel of the original to the screen.

Director Michael O. Sajbel can't rein in the story convolutions or the pompous dialogue of Stephan Blinn's script.

The cast is uneven but never amateurish -- Goss may not be much of an actor, but he looks terrific in various states of royal undress; much the same could be said of Yul Brynner -- and the production values are consistently high.

Esther's triumph isn't because of divine intervention. It's her humanity and bravery that make her a legend, and make that One Night worth remembering, 2,500 years later.

Unfortunately [O'Toole and Sharif are] separated by five centuries, and never share a scene. For a movie with the most righteous of intentions, that's perhaps the most grievous moviemaking sins of all.