The King of Kings Review: Confounding Experience

Seong-ho Jang’s The King of Kings is a weird animated retelling of Jesus’ story; it’s inoffensive but full of eccentric creative choices.

The end result, then, is a movie that doesn’t seem to have been made for anyone in particular, except maybe teachers who want to show an abridged version of Jesus’ story to their very young students.

For some reason, The King of Kings makes use of a framing device featuring Charles Dickens (voice of Kenneth Branagh, of Harry Potter and Poirot fame) and his family. After his rather annoying young son makes a scene during a theatrical reading of A Christmas Carol in front of a confused audience, the famous novelist decides to tell him the story of Jesus at home. After all, the kid is obsessed with King Arthur, and as Dickens tells him, that’s one of many tales that’s actually based on the life of Jesus Christ.

We are then transported to Bethlehem, where we witness the birth of Christ in a manger, with Charles’ son taking part in some of the events his father is retelling, reacting to the many situations he considers to be exciting or fantastical (after all, he was initially only interested in listening to stories about knights and fire-breathing dragons). The King of Kings’ structure, then, ends up consisting of a series of scenes of Jesus’ (played by Oscar Isaac, of the Star Wars sequels) life, intertwined with brief moments in which we see Dickens, his son and his wife, Catherine (Uma Thurman, of Kill Bill) commenting on the story.

At its core, The King of Kings is a simple animated retelling of the life and death of Jesus, including all the expected narrative beats and feeling pretty accurate to what many people still learn at Sunday School. Thus, I can’t help feeling that director Seong-ho Jang and his team felt they needed to find something, anything, to justify yet another version of this tale, which is why they ended up including the Charles Dickens framing device. That is also why it feels forced and like something out of a completely different movie. The emotional dissonance between the two narrative threads ends up almost killing the entire experience, especially since it doesn’t really feel like a creative decision that could work for the film’s intended target audience: little kids.

Who is The King of Kings for, then? Presumably, for the teachers who need a family-friendly version of the story of Jesus to show in school. But even then, the movie might be a bit too intense for younger viewers, especially when we get to the crucifixion. There’s a weird contrast between the film’s cartoony character designs and the tragic tone of the narrative, turning The King of Kings into the rare animated production that could have benefited from a more realistic aesthetic. 

It’s not like the movie looks bad, though. Its visual style is very reminiscent of the way the average Pixar or Dreamworks movie looks, but with more over-the-top animations and less effective lip-syncing. It at least looks expensive, with Jang using rather impressive transitions between Dickens’ storytelling and the flashbacks to Jesus’ time, and presenting us with beautiful shots, especially whenever something supernatural takes place. I’m a big fan, for example, of the way the angels are shown in The King of Kings, making use of slightly more abstract and Biblically accurate designs (sans the millions of eyeballs, though).

The film also benefits from its very talented voice cast. Oscar Isaac is quite convincing as Jesus, Pierce Brosnan is imposing enough as Pontius Pilate, and Kenneth Branagh manages to sound almost nothing like himself, turning Dickens into a rather captivating storyteller. Sadly, the film does feature a stereotypically annoying kid in Dickens’ son, and in an unfortunate turn of events, most of Jesus’ Jewish enemies feature rather grotesque designs, including cartoonishly big noses. It feels nasty, especially considering this is supposed to be a well-intentioned animated picture that tries to convey a message of kindness and love.

The King of Kings, then, is a confounding mixed bag; it’s an animated movie that tries so very hard to appeal to its target audience, but that ends up feeling more like an educational product than an ambitious or well-crafted motion picture. The voice acting is pretty solid (master voice actor Mark Hamill is particularly good as King Herod), the narrative moves at a quick pace, and the portrayal of Jesus should anger pretty much no one. But the contrast between the cartoonish visual style and the tragic narrative doesn’t do the experience any favours, and the film as a whole doesn’t really work as a family-friendly retelling of one of the most famous stories ever told. The King of Kings isn’t horrible, but it definitely should’ve done better to justify its own existence.

The King of Kings was released globally in theaters on April 11, 2025.