Movie Review: David

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent animated film.

This film follows the life of the Biblical David from childhood to when he became king and serves as a follow-up to the animated streaming series, Young David. The movie is even co-directed by that series' creator Phil Cunningham. However, you do not have to either have seen that series nor be familiar with the Bible stories to enjoy this film. The movie sets up everything we need to know very quickly making it perfectly accessible to everyone. Yet Christians who know their Bible stories, who let's be honest make up about 90% of the film's audience, will be delighted that this movie follows the Bible very closely. This is just what will make it work for non-Christians as well. These tales have endured and inspired for centuries because they are still powerful and effective today. That this film stays close to the source material helps give it much of that power as well. The movie's emotional moments hit hard, and its joyful moments make you cheer. 

For an animated feature not made by a major animation studio, it is amazing how good it looks. There is none of that cheap and off-putting look that has hurt so many well-written but low budget animated films. It may not fully reach the height of Disney or DreamWorks in this department, but it still looks very professionally made. 

As this movie is about the writer of many of the Psalms, it is no surprise that music plays a major role. The songs, written by Jonas Myrin (who has co-written hit Christian songs with such popular Christian artists as Michael W. Smith, Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman), are quite good with pleasant melodies and effective lyrics. They may not be especially memorable, but they do their job very well. Having award winning Christian singers Phil Wickham (who voices David as an adult) and Lauren Daigle in the voice cast, as well as Israeli pop singer Miri Mesika, helps elevate that music in this film. 

This movie does have its flaws though. The side characters (especially David's siblings) are not very well developed and come off as crude and unfunny movie stereotypes rather than actual characters. Speaking of unfunny, this movie has too much really forced humor that just doesn't work. 

Despite these flaws though, this is an excellent film that I hope points towards what lies in the future for animated Biblical stories.