MEL Gibson alerted Hollywood to the fact Jesus is still big boxoffice bucks. So after The Passion Of Christ comes the prequel, The Nativity Story, neatly timed by New Line Cinema for Christmas audiences. Catherine Hardwicke might seem an unlikely choice as director. Her previous movies, Thirteen and The Lords of Dogtown, weren't convent viewing. But her understanding of teenagers means she is able to repackage the story as a boymeets-girl tale.

It's one about which little is known, apart from a few spiritually iconic events . . . the Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary she will conceive miraculously, the birth of John the Baptist to her cousin Elisabeth, the birth of Jesus in a stable, the visit of the Magi, the holy family's flight into Egypt and Herod's massacre of the innocents. Hardwicke fills in the gaps to bring the couple alive.

The Magi too are given credibility by being portrayed as astronomers with a scientific as well as a spiritual reason for following the star in the east.

The realistic period detail allows Whale Rider star Keisha Castle-Hughes to give a winning performance as an independentminded Mary, at first resisting an arranged marriage to Joseph (Oscar Isaac), a man she doesn't love. The Nativity is likely to tap the same mid-American fundamentalist Christian audiences . . . the Bush heartlands . . . that helped The Passion of Christ gross $600m, a savage irony in that the Middle East it depicts is that of a population brutally subjugated by a foreign occupation force intent on civilising them. The Roman legions killing women and children are surely no different to their contemporary counterparts, the 'Coalition of the Willing'. The Nativity was given its world premiere in the Vatican, which voiced its approval of its "poetic and faithful retelling of the scriptures". Yet its message of peace to all mankind led to the adult Jesus being arrested and tortured as a suspected terrorist before being nailed to the cross.

No doubt today he would be in Guantanamo Bay. The Nativity is intended to celebrate the coming of the Lord. Maybe it's time someone actually listened to what the Lord has to say.