The CGI is the only good thing about this movie

Rating: 3/10 (3 August 2019)

If this review were to be based solely on the CGI, it would be a 10/10.
But unfortunately everything that made the Lion King one of the greatest movies of all time was undermined, tarnished and watered down.
Starting with the music. Simba and Scar's singing voices were dreadful. What makes this especially annoying is that it is in the middle of the most iconic songs from the movie, namely 'Be Prepared' and 'Hakuna Matata'. Be Prepared was especially insidious as they took all the personality and drama out of the song to make it darker. In principle, I've no problem with this as long as its either as good as the original or better. But it wasn't, it was rubbish. As for Simba's singing, it so was flat and out of tune it was painful to listen to.
Secondly, the characters personalities were extracted and replaced with either celebrities. Rafiki is supposed to be a bit like Yoda, wise yet gregarious and playful. But instead, he's quiet, stoic and uninteresting. Scar is supposed to be suave, cunning and quite camp. But instead he's miserable and quite stupid. Nala's Beyoncé voice was distracting, lazy, and didn't make any sense. The hyenas went from being dumb but quite fun to watch to being dark and really irritating. The only one's that were any good were Timone, Pumba, Mufasa and Zazu.
In short, I hope the animators get given awards, but that's it.