A lacklustre remake with pomp and flourish in the wrong areas.

Rating: 4/10 (28 November 2019)

As a disclosure to everyone I should state that I hadn't seen the original Lion King film in a while, about 7 years to be exact. Prior to clicking the play button I wanted to make sure I didn't watch the original because I knew that despite my directive to be objective in processing the movie I would end up making comparisons to the classic, most probably to a negative effect on the remake. So when I watched the credits roll, it was with fresh face and only a vague memory of the timeless original.
Although it was a fresh face, it was also a disappointed one.
I want to state that this review is not a comparison, but rather a look at the film by itself. I'm sure there are plenty of reviews that criticize the faithfulness of the film to the original and this is not one of them. The Lion King (2019) is a decent movie at best, and that's primarily because it put effort into the wrong areas, at least as far as I'm concerned. Even with a star-studded cast the film failed to provide me with convincing voice acting. The best performances came from Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) while the rest were quite weak. I felt no strong emotions from almost all of the cast and this was certainly not helped by the lack of expressions present on the animals themselves. I get it, we're here for the incredible CGI (which to be fair was quite underwhelming) but looking at Little Simba when he's supposed to be devastated and only seeing a blank expression on his face created a serious disconnect between the already sub-par voice acting and the non-existent emotional expressions. This led to a significant lack of attachment to the characters and in turn, boredom throughout the film.
Working with virtual reality at my job, I tend to notice a lot of details. That might be why this film didn't cut it for me in regards to the CGI as I just wasn't convinced and could easily point out the black spots in the animations. That being said, I think the realism conveyed is quite good - I appreciated the attention to the body muscles of the animals and the almost-on-point execution of the animals' movement to their real counterparts.
Where the film totally disconnected with me were the remakes of the songs. I felt repulsed by the "modernization" of the original's non-frilly musicals and hated what the new cast did to them. Attempting to add more riffs and ornamentation (rapidly moving betweeen two notes, most commonly at the end of a phrase) were terrible and felt very forced and not natural. Add additional dialogue to fit today's standards (like low-effort jokes and references) and it makes for a solid disappointment.
Verdict? Don't watch it and save yourself the time. Yes, the CGI is good enough but the voice acting is dismal, dialogue is forced and songs are altered to sub-par quality.