Review: The Lion King

*A Wimpish Roar*

The Lion King is directed by John Favreau, who had also directed The Jungle Book remake in 2016.

I was optimistic for this remake because I had loved The Jungle Book.

The only thing I didn’t like in that movie was the King Louie song. Even though it was quiet hilarious because Christopher Walken sung it but it took me out of the film and felt tad forced.

The Lion King had NINETEEN songs in it clocking SEVENTY SEVEN minutes and thirty two seconds.

Most of the songs felt forced and could’ve been easily replaced with normal, old fashioned dialogue. Okay, I know you are going to say that the animated version of The Lion King had almost the same amount of songs and that version was legendary. Well, I could tell you for a fact that it did not transform well into the live action version. All the lyrics of the songs were the exact SAME. And moreover when the voice actors sang, for me, it didn’t match up with what was shown on screen at all.

The filmmakers tried to make the animals realistic by making them expressionless.

The animated feature had the freedom to show expressions on the faces of the animals which had a lasting impression on the viewer but in the live action version, the expressionless faces of the characters made everything less interesting. Enough of the rant though let’s talk about the positives. The voice actors are all great.

The standouts for me were Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar and Donald Glover as the adult Simba.

James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader) was terrific as Mufasa as well. The background score was tearjerking and scary when it needed to be. The CGI was impeccable.

Every character design looked real and even better in 3D.

I actually still can’t get over how cute young Simba looked. Anyways saying all that, this movie was a huge disappointment for me, a fan of the animated version. But, for an audience which does not know anything about what the film is about, they’ll surely have a blast because the story is that good.

Disney, don’t make remakes of already well known films for money. This formula is getting tiring real quick.

——————-RATING———————–

Story: Excellent

Performance: Average

Treatment: Excellent

Recommendation: Don’t go unless you don’t know anything about The Lion King.