Easily Disney's Most Soulless Remake. Don't Waste Your Money On It.

Rating: 2/10 (20 July 2019)

The Lion King is a classic amongst Disney's animated library, to the point where it's one of those films which absolutely, positively, DID NOT NEED a remake. But as the company has reached such a huge point of wealth, where they now own Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox and National Geographic, they've also been diving back into their catalogue of animated films and repackaging them in live-action knowing that people will turn up in droves based on nostalgia and brand recognition over actual quality. That's not to say they've all been bad; Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella and Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book actually improved on their source material, and I do respect Maleficent for attempting to flip the perspective of Sleeping Beauty even if it didn't work. But between Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast (which though I rated 7/10 after seeing it in cinemas has gotten worse in hindsight though I haven't watched it since), Dumbo and Aladdin, they've had more misfires than successes. But this is the point where I put my foot down and say "STOP", because The Lion King: HD Remaster is the most soulless of all the remakes to date, and the worst film I've seen this year so far.
To start with some positives, because trust me, I am not going to be very kind in this review, the film is a technical marvel. After he managed to create an entire living, breathing jungle from computers and blue screen in The Jungle Book in 2016, Jon Favreau manages to do the same for the savannahs of Africa. The detail that's on display in the animal design is truly staggering. But this is also a big detriment, as the hyperrealism means that the characters are remarkably unemotive, and some of the most powerful moments of the original don't have anywhere close to the same impact, including notably, Mufasa's death. It honestly reminded me of talking dog films at points. Though to give another positive, the songs by Elton John and Tim Rice are absolute classics. But they've all been heard before, save for "Spirit" by Beyoncé, which is only really there to accompany Simba's return to Pride Rock and isn't even sung by Nala as part of the narrative. The cast are also serviceable in their roles. Notable stand-outs include Chiwetel Ejiofor as a more outwardly threatening Scar, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, who make for a great Timon and Pumbaa, and the always wonderful James Earl Jones reprising his role as Mufasa, even though they're all mostly repeating dialogue from the original. I'm also happy to report that Donald Glover does a wonderful job singing as Simba (anyone who knows of his music career as Childish Gambino won't be surprised to hear this), and his duet with Beyoncé on Can You Feel the Love Tonight is easily the film's strongest musical highlight. But as a whole, the film's positives are very surface level, because the best things about it, including Hans Zimmer's wonderful score, have been done before and better by, you guessed it, the original. Though there are some new additions, they barely add to the film besides padding the run-time out to two hours, and when it comes to what's been changed, though it's mostly small things, they all pile up to feel very inferior to the original. Some of the best lines got cut, including "THEY CALL ME MR. PIG!" and "I'm surrounded by idiots", and the hyenas Banzai and Ed have been renamed Kamari and Azizi, and you can barely tell them apart besides one being voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and one by Eric Andre. And on the musical side of things, Be Prepared, easily one of Disney's best villain songs, got reduced to just its last verse and it sounds more like spoken word, Can You Feel the Love Tonight takes place in the daytime for some baffling reason, and the choreography for the songs, notably, I Just Can't Wait to Be King and the second half of Hakuna Matata, consist of the characters just walking in straight or slightly diagonal lines while singing, with none of the vibrancy that those sequences originally had. And it's that that sums up the biggest problem with this remake: despite the $260 million Disney's thrown at it to try and recapture the look and feel of the original, there is absolutely no soul present at any point.
If you're considering seeing The Lion King: Realistic CGI Retread, let me say this loud and clear: don't waste your money on it. If I didn't have a Cineworld Unlimited membership and my job as a community radio film critic, I would have skipped it, and I have seen films in cinemas that are far worse than this. Though there's nothing technically wrong with it, everything good about it was done much better by the 1994 animated film, and this is essentially the most pointless shot-for-shot remake since Gus Van Sant's Psycho in 1998. I probably wouldn't be so angry with it if, I don't know, Jon Favreau took out all the dialogue and replaced it with narration from David Attenborough to make it more like a nature documentary, or straight-up remade Hamlet using the character names and setting of The Lion King, or did anything just the slightest bit creative. Though Disney aren't going to be stopping these live-action remakes anytime soon and this film is bound to make loads of money regardless of what I've said about it, I implore you, if you legitimately do want to see this, PLEASE wait until you can watch it for free on a streaming service unless you're part of a cinema membership programme. If we give Disney even more money than they deserve, it tells them we want more of this, and all I want at this point is projects that have just the slightest bit of heart and passion and don't feel like calculated business decisions. In the meantime, re-watch the far superior animated film, or track down something else at the cinema I've rated highly recently like Toy Story 4, Yesterday, Spider-Man: Far From Home or Midsommar. Or wait until August (in UK release scheduling) for films like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Blinded by the Light or Crawl. Sure, they're not entirely family-friendly, but you'll probably have a more stimulating cinema-going experience (and having already seen Blinded by the Light through a secret screening, I can say it's absolutely worth watching). Or find something you've never seen before to watch at home on DVD or Blu-Ray or on a streaming service. Do anything but support what's easily the most creatively bankrupt film I've seen in a long time. But at least this'll be the only bad film about singing felines I have to deal with this year. Oh wait, Cats is out in December.