The Lion King Seems Oddly Familiar

The Lion King (2019)

The Lion King is a masterpiece. It is one of the greatest films to have ever been made and is one of my top ten favorite movies of all time. The music. The colors. The characters. All of them come together to form a tapestry of magnificence and a true triumph for Disney. Also, it came out in 1994. That perfect movie has been remade using CGI to appear to be live action and there is no legitimate reason for it to exist besides to line the coffers of Disney. It is impossible to review this new iteration of The Lion King without comparing it to the original because it is the closest to being a shot for shot remake of all of the recent Disney remakes. With that being said, it is worse in every imaginable way. By forgoing traditional animation for realistic CGI, the characters are unable to emote. This disconnect between feelings and expression makes it much more difficult for the audience to connect to the characters. I give the voice actors credit. They tried their hardest to use their tone to convey the emotions, but isn’t enough. The problem is in the eyes. Even in very basic animation, like South Park, the shape of the eyes and the furrow of the brow are able to show more than just the dialogue can express. The animators did not do this for the characters in the Lion King, especially the lions. I have a cat. I can tell in his eyes when he is scared or angry and that’s about it. I could not tell what Simba was feeling by looking at his face. Visually, he did look like a real lion. The animator’s do deserve credit for making the entire movie look and feel real, even though a lion talking to hyenas and birds is not real. Some things were not worse by much. The voice cast was very good, particularly James Earl Jones and Donald Glover. Jones reprised his role as Mufasa and was just as good as before and Glover replaced Matthew Broderick and has a much more regal voice and sounded great in “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”. Glover’s singing was the only improvement on the soundtrack of the original. I listened to the original soundtrack hundreds of times on my Sony Walkman cassette player as a child. I know it backwards and forwards and firmly believe that it is the greatest soundtrack in cinematic history. It was a combination of some of the greatest musical minds of all time. Hans Zimmer’s score was balanced perfectly with the lyrical pieces by Tim Rice and Elton John and the valuable input of South African musician Lebo M. The remake decided to take each song and tweak it to make it just a little bit worse. Some songs, like “Be Prepared” were changed drastically, and others, like the song during the stampede were changed very slightly to fit the visuals, when it would have been better to fit the visuals to the score. Also, I was not a fan of Beyonce’s singing, from her unnecessary runs in “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to her cheesy pop song about spirit that they added to the movie. That song was really one of only three things that were added to the movie. I liked and disliked one change and hated the other. I liked how the remake made Shenzi a leader of the hyenas, but this new role made the change in “Be Prepared” necessary, so it was bittersweet. I loathed a change with Timon and Pumbaa’s characters. In the original, Timon and Pumbaa were loners and outcasts who only had each other and were kind enough to let Simba join them. Then when the time came, they had their moment to through their laissez-faire life aside to step up and help Simba save his home. It was a critical moment in the original. In the remake, Timon and Pumbaa belong to a community of animals who just hang out and eat together. This community aspect detracts from that moment when they decide to help Simba. They are not growing, they are simply moving to a new community. And somehow, by only adding a few things, the remake is 30 minutes longer. I can’t figure out where that extra half hour is, but I definitely felt it as I was watching. I apologize for how negative this review is, because I didn’t hate this movie. It was just wholly unnecessary. This movie is the equivalent of getting a 1600 on your SATs but taking it again to only get 1250. It is still a good score, but there was no reason to mess with perfection. I guess that analogy will do for my rating. The Lion King is a longer version of a better movie, but it is still not a bad movie. I give it 1250 out of 1600.