Great Disney, but hardly their best

Rating: 8/10 (25 September 2000)

This movie is so popular that many people are calling it Disney's best. It is a great and energizing movie, but it is hardly the best. Overall, the movie does its job right, and it does it well. It's dramatic. It makes you laugh, and it makes you cry. But take a look at the story. It's thin, short, and rather shallow. And the main character does hardly anything to further the plot of his own story. A lot of time is filled with the usual bad humor and big songs. I'm not saying The Lion King is a bad movie. Pocahontas was a bad movie. For the most part, The Lion King makes up for this flaw by having a certain scope and grandeur and an incredible ambience and score. But an average story hardly makes The Lion King one of Disney's greats. How do I know? The Lion King, too, used to be my favorite. Then as it got older and I saw more and more Disney movies, The Lion King's charm faded. In fact, two quiet little classics, The Fox and the Hound and Bambi, were the first animated movies to bump The Lion King off my favorites list. Those have much stronger stories and are what I believe to be great Disney. For The Lion King, I give it an 8.