Having raked in some $24 million looking for Noah's Ark, the folks at Sunn Classic Pictures are pursuing another elusive subject. Prompted by recent scientific debate surrounding the Shroud of Turin, they have dashed off this tedious docudrama. Although the ads promise "astonishing new revelations the Bible doesn't tell us," the only astonishing thing about this movie is that people will pay good money to see it. Still, in marked contrast to pseudoscientific claptrap like last year's The Late Great Planet Earth, the film is inoffensive and jumps to no unwarranted conclusions. The genre is, by now, familiar—a simple dramatization of Jesus' life, drawn largely from the Bible and fleshed out by interviews with "experts" in such unlikely spots as Scotland Yard. There is also a history of the shroud itself. Is it authentic? The answer is a resounding maybe. The credits reveal that this particular Search was "filmed entirely on location in Utah," not the first place most Biblical scholars would have thought to investigate. (G)
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