Entertaining, but won't watch again

Rating: 4/10 (21 July 2019)

This remake was OK. Understandably so, the CGI artists were limited by what they could do with animals and their faces. Since there was no easy way to convey emotion through facial expression, it had to fall of the vocal tonage of the actors, but sadly many of the scenes just felt emotionless and the voice acting didn't feel or look right at parts. It's just not a movie that works well with hyper-realism.
The first half of the movie is pretty cringey as the voice actor for Simba did not do a good job of conveying emotion. He often stressed the wrong words which made for awkward transitions and made Simba seem like an entitled brat.
The second half was completely saved by Seth Rogan. Thankfully. But even then, Beyoncé needed to CHILL with the riffing in the songs. The constant riffing felt like she was trying too hard and changing the songs to make them worse, not better. I get that that's her thing and she may feel creative freedom, but the songs were not composed to be sung with that style.