My All Time Favorite Disney Film!!

Rating: 10/10 (19 February 2009)

For so many years, this movie has held a very very special spot in my heart. It wasn't until I had found the movie on Youtube after nearly 8 or 9 years that I finally felt a massive force of good memories come rushing back into me.
To make a long story short, I love this movie, and I'm always glad to see how well recognized it is in the film world. As a child, like with a lot of Disney films, I didn't ever notice some of the deeper details in the storytelling, specifically, the connections to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
This movie had a wonderful story, a multitude of memorable characters, amazing songs (although what else could one expect from Elton John?) and an overall theme that can entertain both children and adults.
Roger Ebert once commented that "Villains are some of the most memorable characters in a Disney film". This is very true, especially when you see Scar, voiced very ingeniously by the brilliant Jeremy Irons. Scar is everything a villain should be: cool, calm, collected, devious, and conniving. In short, a villain needs to use his or her words to their advantage, not mindless violence like a slasher film villain.
Another notable aspect that makes this film stand out, is that it contains one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in film history. Even at the age of 17, nothing has changed. The scene where the lion cub Simba finds his father dead on the ground, and tries to wake him up (fitted with a very sad score by the amazing Hans Zimmer) made me cry when I was a small child, and it still does even at this bitter age. Nothing hurts worse than a child to lose a loved one, without ever having grasped the concept of death.
And of course, this movie would probably have been a little too dark, if it didn't have one of Disney's most beloved comedy relief duos ever: the wisecracking meerkat, Timon (voiced by the hilarious Nathan Lane) and his dimwitted warthog com padre, Pumbaa (also done very well by Ernie Sabella.) Clearly, they have been immortalized in the hearts of young children everywhere when the film was new, just as the film itself has.
All in all, this is one of the greatest movies ever made in modern film history, and for those that want to visit a better time through this movie, and for those that ave miraculously never seen it, I seriously recommend it to all.