If you haven’t figured out, the animated film, “The King of Kings” isn’t about a real king in the socio-political sense. This is a retelling of the biography of Jesus Christ, loosely inspired by a story written by Charles Dickens for his children. Although the film has an impressive voice cast including Kenneth Branagh, Mark Hamill, Ben Kingsley, Oscar Isaac and Uma Thurman, the script by Seong-ho Jang, who also directs, is lackluster. The animation also is good, but uninspired.

The conceit here is that Charles Dickens (Kenneth Branagh) has been lecturing and writing, but his young son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) and his cat Willa (Dee Bradley Baker) have been annoying him, even causing public embarrassment. Chided by his wife, Catherine (Uma Thurman), he begins to tell Walter a story about Jesus Christ (Oscar Isaac) from birth in a manger–pausing to explain what that word means, to his eventual death and resurrection.

Walter wants a story about kings and great fights and Charles, rather unconvincingly from my viewpoint, shows how the story of Jesus Christ is better and more exciting than the kind of kings that young Walter has in mind. Mark Hamill voices King Herod and Pierce Brosnan, Pontius Pilate.

Historical Background

While Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was English, his wife Catherine (19 May 1815 – 22 November 1879) was Scottish. In all, they had ten children. At one point, he attempted to have her committed to an asylum for mental illness, but in the end they separated (May 1858). Catherine was set up in a separate house with her eldest child, Charles Dickens Jr. (6 January 1837 – 20 July 1896), leaving her other children in the care of her unmarried sister Georgina Hogarth (22 January 1827 – 19 April 1917) in the home she had shared with Charles Dickens (Tavistock House).

Charles and Catherine did have a son named Walter. Walter Savage Landor Dickens (8 February 1841-31 December 1863) was the fourth child and second son of Charles and Catherine and he served in the British Army in India where he died (Calcutta).

The manuscript for “The Life of Our Lord” which has been written in 1849 had been left to Hogarth in Dickens’ will. When Hogarth died in 1917, the manuscript was given to Charles Dickens’ last surviving son, English barrister Sir Henry Fielding Dickens (16 January 1849 – 21 December 1933).

Dickens had forbidden the publication of “The Life of Our Lord,” which he read to his children every Christmas, during his own lifetime. He asked Hogarth to make sure the manuscript or any copy of it would not be taken out of the house. The Dickens family continued to read it every Christmas and according to Charles Dickens wishes, the story was not published until the last of his children died.

The original manuscript is in the possession of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

I am not Christian, but I’m someone who grew up watching the Christian clay-animated children’s TV series “Davey and Goliath,” which I enjoyed like I did the abstract world of Gumby and Pokey. I understand that the film “The King of Kings”  targets children, but I think kids will be bored visually and the precociousness of the son and his cat will be received as favorably as a cat scratching on a chalkboard. There’s no layered meaning or intent or mystery as you’d find in better animated features. We get no hint of the sadly short life of Walter or the vexing way that Catherine and Charles ended up separated with Charles plagued by scandalous rumors of mistresses.

“The King of Kings” as an animated feature is not a particularly good addition to the Charles Dickens canon. The manuscript was written between 1846 and 1849 which is about the time Dickens was writing “David Copperfield.” Dickens had already written “A Christmas Carol” (1843). I imagine that some of the power of the actual tale that inspired this film was in the memories of a once united and happy family.

“The King of Kings” was acquired by Angel Studios for theatrical release on 11 April 2025.