The Lion King remake, like a live band.

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2019)

Hve you ever gone to see your favourite band play live? How was it? Were the songs as good in-person as they are on the album? Be honest. They probably weren't. Oh, sure, theres a lot about a live performance that you don't get when you stream songs on Spotify. But the quality of the music when listening live is almost always worse. It's just a fact. You realistically know that when you buy the concert ticket. But you're not paying to hear the songs in perfect quality, your paying to see the performer live on the stage, for the experience of being in the crowd, for the novelty of a night out. It's a trade off.
That's exactly what the new Lion King movie is. Let's be honest, no one bought a ticket truly expecting it to be better than the original cartoon. You knew that some parts wouldn't be the same. You just kan't have a "live" (technically photorealistic CG) warthog sing and dance the same as a cartoon. There is a trade off for the feeling of live animals truly living this story. The novelty factor is real. You get a different experience.
If you ever thought "what would this cartoon look like if it were happening in reality" then congrats! Because someone else was willing to spend 260 million dollars to give you the answer. And the answer is, it's just fine. Like any live band, it was enjoyable. But I don't need to see it more than once.
The parts that worked, worked very well. There was some small aditions to the film that made it a bit better, more cohesive, and fixed small plot problems. The wildebeast stampede, for example, is about 4 animals wide, rather than about 20 wide in the cartoon. You'd need a heard of 4 million to charge for a full 5 minute scene, but if they're running only about 4 across it makes more sense visually.
The motivation for the animals/characters were also a bit more fleshed out. Nala, especially, seems to have a more reasonable story arc, rather than just being there. A scene depicting her escape from pride rock makes it more meaningful that she should find the rightful king, and then work hard to put him in power.
But these things don't bring the film up as much as other parts drag it down. You can feel how much the filmmakers loved the original, and stuck true to many of the lines, lyrics, and camera shots that we expect to get (knowingly or otherwise). But some added footage of the Savana just makes the film feel stretched. It's a full 30 minutes longer, where as only about 5 minutes add anything to the story.
But the largest problem of all was unavoidable. A CG animal just can't emote the same as a cartoon. And the loss of that just can't be replaced. Other talking animal movies go as far as to give the creatures more human facial features, like the eyes especially, so they can give them a look of surprise or rage when needed. Think Michael J Fox's Stewart Little. But here they go in a different direction. With strong vocal performances mixed with superb body language, they try to deliver the emotion the story requires. It's a bold direction, and a valiant effort. By all accounts it works. But just not as well as a cartoon form the 90's.
I could go on about the voice acting for an hour, but it's largely subjective. So I'll leave it alone. All in all, the movie was a very interesting experience, and a very worthy re-telling. I'm glad I paid for the ticket. But it's not going to be a staple of near as many households as the oringinal, which is just straight up more fun.