Boy, 2014 has been an epic year. Not since the early 1960s have two major studio pictures telling tales from the Old Testament emerged in the same twelvemonth (to use the language of these things).

Back then they tended to be grandiose, camp affairs that worked the blatantly erotic in with the supposedly secular. If you wanted to see Gina Lollobrigida wriggle her midriff with your church group then Solomon and Sheba was the place to go.

There wasn't much sex in Darren Aronofsky's Noah, but it was deranged enough to pass the time. By way of contrast, Ridley Scott's heart-stoppingly sober take on the Book of Exodus could hardly be more boring if it were enacted through tableau vivant. How is it possible to people a film with so many effeminate male characters – Ben Mendelsohn is particularly ladylike as a corrupt governor – and entirely avoid any diverting camp energies?

Well, removing all magic from the story certainly helps achieve that aim. A charismatic Christian Bale is unexpectedly martial as Moses. Joel Edgerton is less effective as an apparently South African Ramses. (The casting of white actors in the lead roles has kicked up some justifiable anger.)

But the film’s eagerness to have the miracles make scientific sense will only annoy believers and fail to convince sceptics. If, in a movie, an all-powerful God causes the Red Sea to part then, just as he or she suspends belief when watching Darth Vader at work, the reasonable atheist viewer will hop on for the ride. Tying the event to some fantastic accident of the tides only causes such people to cast eyes furiously to heaven.

More seriously, such hopeless Dawkins placation leaves us with a scene that, for all the pseudo-ethnic scoring and digitally created millions, depicts a large party of people going for an almighty paddle. This sour Moses – whose visions come after a biff on the head – emerges as a certifiable lunatic who gets lucky with a few meteorological, geographical and zoological anomalies.

Church is more fun. Church, I tell you!