Movie Review: God is alive and crabby, according to ‘The Brand New Testament’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Stephen Holden

This is a poster for The Brand New Testament. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.

In the Belgian filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael’s wickedly amusing religious satire, “The Brand New Testament,” God (Benoît Poelvoorde) is a snarling, meanspirited bully who rules the universe from an apartment in Brussels. Inside his locked office, surrounded by walls of card files, the tyrannical, perpetually bored deity sits behind a computer and plays nasty practical jokes on humans. A favorite pastime is contriving Laws of Annoyance, like making sure that when a piece of toast falls, it always lands with the jelly side down. God’s wife (Yolande Moreau) is a silent, slavishly dutiful housekeeper; his son, JC, has been reduced to a statue. It remains for his rebellious young daughter, Ea (Pili Groyne), to flout his authority. [link]