4-19-2025 4:19am

An Animated Take

Jeff Barto Editor

By Tyler Hummel

Regal Hunt Valley

11511 McCormick Rd, Hunt Valley MD 21030

Overview

Synopsis

Charles Dickens explains the story of the gospel to his rowdy son in an effort to connect with him.

Length

1 hour, 40 minutes

Release Date

April 11, 2025

Rating

Distribution

Angel Studios

Directing

Seong-ho Jang

Writing

Seong-ho Jang

Composition

Kim Tae-seong

Starring

Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Roman Griffin Davis, Forest Whitaker, Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac.

When was the last time an animated Bible story was a blockbuster? I’m tempted to say that Prince of Egypt and Joseph: King of Dreams were the last major attempts, emerging as one of DreamWorks Animation’s most famous projects (less so the straight-to-video prequel). The Jim Henson Company’s The Star was easily the largest and most recent such attempt, with a star-studded cast and modest $63 million box office draw. There have been a handful of others but these projects are few and far between, and generally aren’t produced by major film studios.

Faith-based filmmaking has certainly remained in a strange place for the past decade as studios like PureFlix and Kingdom Story Company have produced dozens of popular and successful indie flicks, but these stories are generally produced as low-budget counterprogramming for evangelicals. Long-gone are the periods when Hollywood would pour blockbuster money into Bible epics like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments. However, the success of The Chosen has allowed Angel Studios to take a few risks in recent years and finance a slate of original films, including a new star-studded Bible film for children.

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images: A few scenes of death and dark imagery drawn directly from scripture.
Language/Crude Humor: None.
Drug/Alcohol References: Limited to none.
Sexual Content: None.
Spiritual Content: The film is a dramatization of the gospels that explores the meaning of Jesus’s ministry.
Other Negative Content: Limited to none.
Positive Content: Themes of family, kingship, connection, love, and the story of God.

Review

The title of Angel Studio’s newest animated film will probably perk the ears of film fans who have any familiarity with the history of filmmaking. It shares its title with two of the most famous Biblical epics of all time, even though the three films have nothing to do with each other. Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927) is an epic silent film with some of the best filmmaking in its genre, that follows Jesus’s ministry in its final weeks through to the resurrection. Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961) is conversely a big budget epic covering a wider timespan that specifically delves deeply into Barabbas and the Jewish rebellions at the time of Christ.

Angel Studio’s The King of Kings (2025) has nothing to do with either of these, but is instead a children’s storybook film that takes a unique angle in unfurling the story of the gospels through the eyes of Charles Dickens. This feels like a bit of a left turn, but it is drawing on something interesting. It is based partially on The Life of Our Lord, an unpublished retelling of the gospels that Dickens wrote to his children and refused to have published during his lifetime, instead preferring to keep it private.

Dickens was something of an infamous skeptic of organized religion, famously downplaying its role in A Christmas Carol. He was a modernist and held many 19th-century prejudices against religion. However, he wasn’t an atheist and seemed to have maintained a private piety for Jesus Christ, and maintaining the faith within his family’s home. Using him as the lens for a gospel retelling is thus strange and possibly a bit revisionistic, as the film doesn’t really provide the context for this and merely falls back on Dickens’ cultural image as a great storyteller to give the story a new lens.

The story of The King of Kings begins shortly after the publishing of A Christmas Carol, with Dickens himself performing the story on stage to large crowds in Victorian London. When his undisciplined son Walter interrupts the reading with his pet cat and starts parading on stage like King Arthur, Dickens loses his temper and punishes the boy with a stern talk. Attempting to reconnect with the unruly boy, he starts reading his new manuscript for his new novella about the life of Jesus, using the boy’s obsession with kings as a bridge. The film thus plays out as a series of vignettes, displaying a dozen or so of the most famous stories of the gospel, regularly cutting back to Charles and Walter explaining the significance of a moment when he gets confused.

The King of Kings is hyperkinetic and brazen enough that it is clearly made for a very young audience who are hearing these stories for the first time. There isn’t much of an attempt in the film to appeal to older audiences or parents, with Walter’s antics generally airing on the side of annoying rather than cute. Its only real notoriety for adult viewers is its surprisingly extensive celebrity voice cast.

Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Forest Whitaker, Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac all have major roles in the film and seem to be enjoying themselves. This definitely gives the film some curiosity, given that I’m not sure what attracted most of these celebrities to these roles. Having Mark Hamill hamming it up as King Herod with the same gravely inflection as the Joker is amusing just because I recognize his voice.

It doesn’t surprise me that The King of Kings is aiming for such a young audience, as it is far from the first animated film aimed at educating younger viewers. Its framing device is directly designed to make the story accessible to kids, and its shorter runtime keeps things brisk and highly expository. Thankfully, the film’s stylization and solid voice acting are enough to cover for some of the corners cut in the CGI and storytelling, even when characters are occasionally under-animated at awkward moments. There are a few moments of dead-eye staring though that are awkward. It’s a movie that the right audience will adore!

Positives

+ Strong voice cast
+ Some beautiful moments
+ Brisk kid-friendly story

Negatives

- Cut corner animation
- Lack of adult viewer appeal
- Curious creative decisions

The Bottom Line

The King of Kings is a solid story-book film for young viewers, but adult viewers will likely be distracted by some of its creative decisions or amused by its impressive voice cast.

7.0

Posted in Animated, Christian, Movies, Reviews

Tyler Hummel

Tyler Hummel is a Nashville-based freelance journalist, a College Fix Fellow, and a member of the Music City Film Critics Association. He has contributed to Geeks Under Grace, The Living Church, North American Anglican, Baptist News Global, The Tennessee Register, Angelus News, The Dispatch, Voeglin View, Hollywood in Toto, Law and Liberty, The Federalist, Main Street Nashville, Leaders Media, and the Catholic Herald of Milwaukee.