Like the Deluxe Illustrated Jesus for Kids your Great Aunt gave you for Christmas instead of the sports-gear you wanted, an oversized tome left unopened in its original shrink wrap on your bedroom bookshelf till college & the donation box called. But had you looked inside at the heavy-gage glossy paper, you’d have found what LIGHT offers, a rather handsome, posterized version of The Gospel According to Market Research, a Bowdlerized Biblical primer on Jesus and his Merry Disciples joyfully spreading ‘the word’ in Judea, wandering ‘J-Pop’ stars (that's 'Jesus-Pop'), offering magic tricks that are real. (Cute guys hip enough to make a JAWS reference.) Fleshed out in pretty hand-drawn animation, and boasting a Band-of-Brothers vibe, it’s reasonably effective at hitting some of the early highlights in the canon. But once we’ve crossed into Jerusalem, with Jesus now proclaiming himself King Messiah, the cherry-picked happy incidents have no way to pivot toward the disturbing last act. (This telling hardly alone in tripping up here.) Glib explanations on cause & effect in place of The Sermon on the Mount, the confrontation and riot at the Temple/Marketplace, et al. What, you wonder, could anyone possibly object to from this winning clean-cut crew? You may also start wondering why no one in here has skin tones darker than Mediterranean ‘olive.’ And as to those chalk-white Romans? As usual, they're pretty much let off the hook as if the moviemakers were still proselytizing . . . oh.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *Released months after THE KING OF KINGS/’25, another Jesus-for-Kids animation with a much starrier vocal cast, if IMDb.com can be believed, each film budgeted at 20 mill, but KING grossing nearly 80 mill to LIGHT’s disappointing 4. Perhaps there is a limit to the Up-With Christianity market. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-king-of-kings-2025.html
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