Better than expected, however bad writing and acting

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2019)

I wasn't exactly looking forward to this movie. I just didn't see any point in it considering they've taken an animated movie and made it into..... an animated movie, except this time it looks real. I firmly believe that the CGI epidemic going through Hollywood right now is merely a monetary scheme. The Lion King (2019) is no exception, however, I enjoyed this movie a lot.
The cinematography was beautiful. Powerful establishing shots of the African landscape and its creatures deemed Disney once again as prominent in its colour and design. The camerawork didn't feel sloppy or too fast, and as a spectator I was able to concentrate on what was happening in the frame before it cut away - a huge redemption compared to the editing in Aladdin (2019). However I feel like some of the close-ups of Mufasa, Scar and Simba could have been held longer as this would have made them so much more powerful.
However, I feel like the performance of the voice actors was incredibly weak. While in the original the characters had power in their words, these actors merely feel like they're reading from a script without much deliberation on how to convey each words. I also feel like the dubbing of Young Simba's voice was careless, as it sounded more like a narration than the character actually speaking, which is a big problem for animated movie.
The writing of the film seemed lazy to me. It seemed like they merely took the original script, and then only changed some of the "comedic" lines, which was off-putting, as I felt they should have either copied the entire script (the original ad-libs too) or changed the script entirely. Because they only changed some of the lines, the writing seemed unbalanced and awkward.
I also have mixed feelings about 'Spirit', the new song by BeyoncÃ©. While I think it's a good song, it doesn't fit with any of the other soundtrack and score pieces, and seems like yet another ploy to get into the charts and be nominated for an Oscar. I'm just glad that it was played over the characters actions, and not sang by the characters themselves. I did greatly dislike the new composition of 'Be Prepared'. It had none of its power or maliciousness, nor any of its strong wartime reflections, and felt lazy and bland.
In summary, I'm in love with the realism of this film (something I was initially wary of) and the cinematography, however the acting, writing and a couple of the songs were reckless, lazy and unrevised.