The Plot
If you saw the original Lion King then you should already be familiar with the plot. A young cub lion named Simba (played by JD McCrary as young Simba and Donald Glover as adult Simba) gets tricked by his uncle into thinking that he caused his father’s death, so he gets banished from the kingdom where he learns about responsibility and what his true destiny is. This movie is pretty much a shot for shot remake of the original but there were a few short scenes thrown in to pad the movie out. If you ever wanted to see an extended version of Simba’s hair blowing in the wind then you won’t be disappointed here. And if you ever wondered how Nala (played by Beyonce as adult Nala and Shahadi Wright Joseph as young Nala) escaped her pride to find Simba then you will definitely get what you asked for in this movie. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am a big fan of the original Lion King, so I will do my very best not to compare this remake to the classic even though there is a good portion of this movie that carries over scenes from the original.
The Visual Effects
This is one of the best looking movies of the year without a doubt. The beautiful setting of Africa was jaw dropping to say the least and I felt like I was watching a documentary on Animal Planet. The whole movie was made on a computer with the exception of one scene. Jon Favreau himself said that there was one scene in this entire film that was completely authentic and if you asked me to pick that scene, I don’t think I would be able to tell you because the whole movie looks real. It will be like trying to find Waldo in a colorful environment. This is just my personal opinion, but I believe the very first shot of the sun rising in the sky is what Favreau was referring to. This movie should get an award for the special effects alone since there is no other movie with this much realism. It blows my mind that this entire movie is CGI and it probably took the visual effects team hundreds of hours to recreate scenes from the original.
All Style With No Substance…
Unfortunately, the visuals are the only reason to go out and see this movie. This is a prime example of a movie that is all style with no substance. Every performance in this movie, with the exception of JD McCrary, is shallow and lifeless. I have no idea what the director was thinking by making these authentic creatures emotionless. Actually, I do have an idea of what he was trying to go for but there comes a time where you have to ask yourself, “Should I do that and risk a generic retelling of a classic movie?” I am honestly surprised no one tapped him on his shoulder to let him know that the animals should have some kind of expression so that the audience can connect to them. After watching this movie, it felt like no one sat down to watch it before releasing it in theaters; like they knew it was going to make money regardless, which felt wrong to me. I couldn’t feel anything and I spent the majority of the run time bored by the performances. I felt like the actors didn’t even try to give a good performance here; I couldn’t believe how lifeless the animals looked and how expressionless they were. Every line is either rushed to get to the next scene or flat and I found the majority of the characters painfully generic. Even the great James Earl Jones sounded like he didn’t want to be there and I really can’t blame him since he probably felt like he was rehashing the same lines he used twenty plus years ago.
The Differences
As I mentioned above, there are scenes in this movie that feel completely unnecessary and are only in there to make this movie longer than it has to be. The journey of Simba’s hair was mind boggling to me since all you really need to know is that Rafiki gets the hair. I was asking myself, “Why does this scene have to be four minutes long?” when in the original it was only like ten seconds. That is another problem with this movie, the pacing is stretched so far with certain scenes that it rivals the Hobbit movies when it comes to stretching a short story into an even longer clustered mess. When Timon and Pumbaa are singing their song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” it goes on for an extra two minutes when i it really should have been about thirty seconds like in the original. What is the point of making an hour and a half Disney movie into an almost two hour long flick? What was the overall message this movie was trying to tell us with those extra twenty minutes? I honestly could not tell. The only thing I noticed was how much time I wasted watching this mess. Nala’s scene is another good example of padding the movie out. Instead of just having Nala show up to find Simba, the movie decides to show in detail how she escaped from Pride Rock. I guess it is supposed to show off how clever she is by evading Scar and the other hyenas, but it just came off as a waste of time.
In Conclusion
This was a gigantic mess and Jon Favreau should be ashamed of himself for releasing this generic movie to the public. I would have been fine with a different take on the story but this movie sticks to the original script so much that it is almost impossible to not compare the two films. I tried my best to see this movie for what it was and all I got out of it was a generic version of The Lion King with realistic looking animals. That is all I got from this film and I already know this movie is going to make a lot of money at the box office because people love the original as much as I do. That is how powerful nostalgia is! The only other good thing I can think of is no matter how bad this movie is I can always go back to the original for a great time. This movie will be forgotten and will probably go down as one of the biggest disappointments from Disney in history. I am going to give this movie 2 stars out of 5. It barely escaped being terrible because of my nostalgia for the original movie and the visual appeal. Please, do yourself a favor and skip this movie. It does everything the original did, only worse. If you enjoyed my review then do me a solid and share this with your friends. I would very much appreciate it! Thank you!
The Great Critic 