Like Jesus of Nazareth, this is a made-for-TV mini-series, but at just under three hours, only half as long. The style of the earlier series is distinctive: Franco Zefirelli is known for his overdone and baroque design. This Jesus is light and anonymous, if slick and competent: the feel of a TV-show-factory product. So it is, from Lux Vide, the prolific Italian company which counts among its often religious-themed productions the ongoing Bible Project, including mini-series like Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. Yet if this movie is machine-made, it is also one of the most astonishingly fresh, with many powerful and original touches. You realize something's up when the film opens with a montage of terrible things done in Christ's name (witch burnings, crusades, etc). And you might be forgiven for wondering if this film might turn out to be just one more. But when that unsettling vision is revealed as a bad dream that Jesus of Nazareth wakes out of, you realize you're in for a wild ride — a film that takes chances, with plenty of misses, but enough hits to make for an uneven treasure.

This Jesus takes a little getting used to: he's young, full of life, and playful, he skips stones, splashes water on his disciples, joins in chase games with the children. He seems modeled on the "Laughing Christ" prints that were popular in the 1970s. The weakness of actor Jeremy Sisto is that while he's loads of fun and you'd really like to hang out with the guy, he doesn't bring much authority to Jesus as teacher or prophet — which, of course, is an outrageous set of traits to have to offset perfectly. But if Sisto errs a bit on the side of Christ's humanity, the portrayal is still a welcome balance to many a screen depiction which has erred on the side of prophetic intensity. Neither is the production up to the more deadly serious elements of the story: the Passion sequence is weak, in some ways perfunctory, as compared to the richness and zest and originality of the rest.

Ah, but good parts are a delight. Among these, we get here the screen's most fully-realized and endearing Joseph of Nazareth: veteran actor Armin Mueller-Stahl infuses the role with all the rich rootedness of his German-Jewish accent. When Jesus has heart-to-heart with his father about Lazarus's sister, Mary, who is obviously in love with Jesus, Joseph is loathe to give him advice. "I'm just a carpenter," he says. "But I do know this. You're not just a carpenter." And you won't find a better John the Baptist than this one: a wild-eyed Scotsman — which turns out to be an incredibly appropriate choice — who comes acrosss like some intimidating prefiguration of John Knox. The Devil is played by a Dutch actor who argues his cases with a witty and urbane intelligence, making temptations worthy of that name. But for every one of these wonderful touches, the film has share of corny scenes that don't work, including reversion to cheesy TV special effects for miracles and supernatural events. Unlike the worst of the old Biblical Epics, however, these anti-climactic climaxes aren't substitutes for dramatic and thematic power, just annoying interruptions in filmmakers' otherwise compelling engagement with a story that feels living and genuine in their hands.