Ambitious, but deeply flawed

Rating: 5/10 (20 January 2005)

At the time, it seemed like an almost ominously good idea: an animated Disney film that was to plumb new depths of darkness and emotion. Critics have identified everything from "Bambi" to "Hamlet" to the Passion story as source material, and while some of those parallels might be more forced than others, some certainly have the ring of truth ("Hamlet" in particular), and it's obvious that Disney was attempting to stretch here, with an animated feature more adult and literate than the three consecutive comic operas it had produced before it.
The movie made a bundle of money, of course, but somebody at Disney must have found something very wrong with it, as they never tried to duplicate the "Lion King" model again. (In fact, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" can be viewed as its exact opposite  a film that tries to turn a dark, ambitious, literary work into a junk TV cartoon.) In terms of musical style, too, the subsequent diminishing-returns animated films from Disney mainly reverted to the Ashman/Menken mock-Broadway formula, instead of imitating this pop-rock precedent.
So, "The Lion King" is ambitious. But is it successful? As Mufasa and Scar would certainly agree, these things do not always go hand in hand. And despite its conceptual daring, "The Lion King" must be judged at best an artistic compromise, and at worst an all-out failure. The design, of course, is spectacular, and the first sequence stands not only with other animated films but with all movie musicals as one of the most memorable opening numbers of all time.
But it isn't long before things start to go wrong. Elton John's songs are tuneful enough, but Tim Rice's lyrics are surprisingly witless, suffering from vague language and clumsy imagery ("Yes, our teeth and ambitions are bared"  bared ambitions?). It's surprising how much the Menken/Ashman team is missed  "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" tried hard to be "Under the Sea" on the savanna, but Ashman's witty patter, almost more like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan than Broadway, is sorely lacking. (Ashman might actually have been the magic ingredient in the Disney recipe  they haven't made a decent non-Pixar animated feature since he died.)
Jeremy Irons, as Scar, essentially repeats Jonathan Freeman's campy Jafar from "Aladdin," if anything achieving the remarkable feat of making this character even more mincing ("I must practice my curtsy," he sniffs when Mufasa reminds him of the rules of succession). And much of the adult appeal is squelched by the insertion of the most gratingly unfunny comic-relief characters into the mix. I find it nearly inconceivable that Disney should eventually have chosen to remake the film from the point of view of its worst characters.
Furthermore, over the decades Disney has been accused of racism and sexism in its cartoons, both rightly and wrongly  but it's hard to deny that both are genuinely present here. After all, why shouldn't the hyena caste (socially inferior only because of their species) have a place at the table? (The use of Nazi imagery to depict them is more than a little ridiculous, given the lions are obviously the "Master Race" in the world of the film.) And as for sexism, why do the lionesses need a male to come back and rescue them from an effete wimp like Scar at all?
So in the end, the design remains beautiful, and certainly not everyone will have the same problems with the irritating elements I've discussed. Plus, I suppose some points have to be given for ambitious intent in itself. And yet the film as a whole provides neither the challenge nor the satisfaction it might have, and that's a true disappointment. 5 out of 10.