Rushed

Rating: 4/10 (20 July 2019)

This review might contain spoilers on the plot line, but hey... if you don't know the plot line you probably don't live on earth.
Let me start by saying, I absolutely love the original Lion King film, and the musical. That's also why I was highly anticipated to see this. And I must say, it's visually stunning, and it took me back to the old days. But unfortunately, they did something terrible to the script.
The film lacks character depth in pretty much every character, this is mainly caused by the fact that all dialogues are rushed. It's like they cut half an hour of dialogue from the original, and also took away all the pauses. This has the effect that you just don't "feel" the story anymore. You don't feel the paternal bond between Simba and Mufasa, you don't feel the internal struggle that Scar goes through and you can't feel any love tonight between Nala and Simba.(pun intended)
There are many parts that illustrate this, but one that particularly sums it up well: The moment that Nala and Simba see each other again, after being separated for years. It starts with Nala chasing Pumba in a scene that could have been taken straight from the "earth" series. It looks absolutely amazing and takes quite some time. Then Simba comes into play, he and Nala fight a bit, they recognize each other, share a "where have you been for all this time" and a "you need to come back" and the scene ends. I haven't measured, but I'd say this scene is about 4 minutes chase, and about 30 seconds of dialogue, while it should have been the other way around. It just completely doesn't cover the emotional charge that it should have had. To me this scene pretty much sums up the movie.
So is it all bad? No, again, it looks awesome! And it takes you back to the old days! So I would still advise you to go see it, but make sure you do it in imax or Dolby digital, to really get the best out of it.
Oh and one last thing, I absolutely loved the casting. Especially Jon Oliver as Zazu. But they really swung and missed on Beyonce. Her voice just doesn't match the character. If they would have cast her for Sarabi (Simba's mom) I would have thought it would have been spot on, but I think the problem is we all know that Beyonce is in her late 30's and Nala's supposed to be a young adult.