Nothing to see here.

Rating: 3/10 (20 July 2019)

As far as remakes go. The 2019 Lion King is almost as by-the-numbers as Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho. About 80 percent of the film's shots and dialogue are lifted directly from the original. What minimal attempts they make to expand the story fall flat. In some cases, these efforts fall flat because there was insufficient time to develop them and in other cases the director forgot that less can sometimes be more.
While Jon Favreau has been known to make delightfully entertaining and emotionally satisfying films, such as the original "Iron Man" and "Elf," he is most decidedly "off his game" in this film. As previously mentioned, most of the shots are copied and pasted from the original with an admittedly impressive CGI gloss serving as its only saving grace. The cast performances are mostly anemic, save for Young Simba's JD McCrary and the always revered James Earl Jones.
The worst offense is the squandering of the film's iconic score. Key measures of the film's most famous tracks, which were so powerful in the original because they were only used once or twice in the whole film, have been copied and pasted throughout the entire film. When the time comes for the track to play during its originally intended scene, it has lost all its impact because the audience has already heard the piece at least six times before. Additionally, the music is so out of sync with the character's movements that the animals actually "miss their marks" and stifle the scene's intended emotional tone. This error begs the question: who do you blame when a CGI lion misses its mark- the director or the animator?
The film's undisclosed multimillion dollar budget has definitely gone towards dazzlingly superior visual effects. However, this is a Disney movie and therefore that detail is nothing to write home about.