The King of Kings
Director: Seong-ho Jang
Producer: Seong-ho Jang, Woo-hyung Kim
Based on: "The Life of Our Lord" by Charles Dickens
Screenplay: Seong-ho Jang
Cinematographer: Woo-hyung Kim
Music: Kim Tae-seong
Starring: Oscar Isaac (Jesus Christ), Kenneth Branagh (Charles Dickens), Uma Thurman (Catherine Dickens), Mark Hamill (King Herod), Pierce Brosnan (Pontius Pilate), Forest Whitaker (Peter), Ben Kingsley (High Priest Caiaphas)
Production Company: Mofac Studios
Country: United States
Initial release: April 11, 2025
Run Time: 101 minutes
Every year around Christmas for at least the past 30 years I have read "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, and ever since I discovered he wrote "The Life of Our Lord" about 15 years ago I have included it among my annual or semi-annual readings after I read "A Christmas Carol", just like the Dicken's family would do after Charles Dickens passed away. I always thought the two should be published together, at least, and perhaps even include a few of his other Christmas tales.
When I found out not long ago a children's animation was being released on the little book Dicken's wrote about Jesus, I wanted to be happy about it, but couldn't help but be hesitant in how I felt, seeing that pretty much every representation of Jesus and his story on film in the 21st century has been horrendous. But seeing that this was a movie with children as the target audience, I could at least have some wiggle room in my evaluation of the material.
After seeing the movie, I was pleasantly surprised. It sort of reminded me of the old Bible animations I was raised on and learned my first Bible stories from, like "Superbook" in the 1980's. One of the things I loved about "Superbook" was that it left all the comedy and silliness to make it attractive to children to characters (including the signature pet animal) who had nothing to do with the original biblical story being depicted, while the biblical stories themselves, and of course Jesus most of all, could remain in character as much as possible to how he is described in the Gospels. In "The King of Kings" we get the same type of script, where the comedy and silliness is displayed by Charles Dickens and his youngest son along with their pet cat, which allows for the biblical stories to play out somewhat faithfully. This also brings me to one of the things I most hate about the more contemporary movies about Jesus, where the biblical characters themselves, especially Jesus, are overly humanized and stretched out to be more relatable to modern audiences, thus watering down dramatically the biblical stories and compromising them.
I loved how much Charles Dickens was a part of this movie, and even that it began with him on tour performing "A Christmas Carol". However, instead of just focusing on the youngest child, I think it would have been better to include the older children as well. The most annoying character in this movie is the pet cat, who is a bit over utilized for my taste, but seeing how the young girls reacted to the cat in the audience I was in, and they were the intended target audience, I suppose I'm in the minority. Still, I will take an annoying cat over an annoying Jesus any day, and seeing that the great majority of modern Jesus' in films these days are extremely annoying, I was able to maintain a smile during the scenes with the annoying cat thanking God that the writer was at least wise enough to make a non-biblical character the most annoying for adults watching this.
The scenes with Jesus played a good balance of not over-divinizing him on the one hand and over-humanizing him on the other. I do wish the stories were a little more faithful to how Dickens wrote them, which is one of my favorite things reading this little book by Dickens, but my hope is that it will at least inspire children and adults to read the original for themselves. There are certain things in the book I also wish were included, but perhaps this would best be depicted in a film for an older audience to understand. Though I would have liked to hear some of the advice he gives his children in the book, such as at the end where he writes:
"Remember! It is Christianity TO DO GOOD, always even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them, or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace."
To conclude the film in this way would have been preferable. Dickens also composed two short prayers for his children to say that are included at the end of the book, which would have been a great scene at the end of the movie of him praying these prayers at the end with his family. When is the last time you saw a family pray in a movie unless it was before they ate a meal or maybe even attended church?
Though I would have made different choices in some areas of the film, I was happy to at least see something I would not hesitate to have children see and be inspired by. It would make a very good double feature for children every Christmas as well, after first watching some depiction of "A Christmas Carol". This way they can get a pretty well-rounded idea of what Christmas is all about.
I give this film an 8.9 out 10.
