On Christmas, I took my family to see David, a new film from Angel Studios that follows the life of the Patriarch David, from Humble Shepherd to King of Israel.

In today's episode, I'm going to talk about my one problem with the film that comes up a lot in stories about David.

But first, we need to talk about the film itself, which I would rank as good or even pretty good.

Although, I feel like someone in the production said, can we get the guy who did Prince of Egypt? And someone told him, no, but we can get his brother. And I hear he's just as good. Except he's not just as good. My eight-year-old said the songs weren't very good, but I just call them forgettable. None of them had me cringing, but I don't really remember any of the songs, except for the Shalom's song that David sings to Saul, which better be good because it's supposed to illustrate God's gift of music to David. But overall, the songs were nothing to write home about. In contrast, I can still belt out, look at your life through heaven's eyes, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, from Prince of Egypt, which, by the way,

Samuel and David looks a bit like someone re-skinned Jethro in Prince of Egypt. The animation style

in David is very good, highlighting the character's features, but it also feels like a mashup of

Disney's and Canto mixed with the blockiness of the characters in the 1960s marionette show,

Thunderbirds. And the story is structured well for a film about David, because you might be surprised that David's fight against Goliath happens midway through the film, and there's still a lot to cover after that. Which is a good time for me to talk about what I call the Goliath problem. The trailers for David do a good job of hiding Goliath's face, because when he appeared,

I nearly burst out laughing. He looked like a 12-foot-tall, pasty Roman emperor due to his sharp

facial features. My son also leaned over and asked me, Dad, why is Goliath white? Since everyone else in

the film is Middle Eastern, to which I wanted to say, Oh my God, Karen, you can't just ask people why they're white.

I was worried that the fight between David and Goliath would have a modern,

Marvel action pacing to it, something where David uses his speed and agility to avoid Goliath

attacks and then bring him down with his sling.

But I was pleasantly surprised that instead of this, the camera shows Goliath

taunting the God of Israel, who he sees as a more worthy foe than David. This loosely corresponds

to 1 Samuel 1743, which says, the Philistine cursed David by his gods. As Goliath looks up and

taunts Yahweh, the camera zooms out high into the sky away from Goliath,

and his voice becomes quieter and quieter. The camera retreats and focuses on the midday sun

hovering overhead, revealing that the God of Israel is infinitely bigger and more powerful

than any supposed giant among men. The shot is then interrupted by David's sling, and Goliath is brought down. Though to keep the PG rating, they omit the part of the narrative where David cuts off Goliath's head. In fact, there are lots of thorny issues about the Amalekites and how Israel fought them that the film bypasses, which makes sense given its scope and target audience. So it's something I'll probably

address in a future episode. Instead, my main problem with the film, and it's not a huge problem,

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