Voices were awful

Rating: 5/10 (22 February 2020)

I grew up as a massive fan of the original. The songs and voice acting in the 1994 film were exceptional. They really brought the personalities of the characters to life. In this film the voice acting for every part were not just average, they were very poor. For the first 30 minutes I felt like I was watching a pirate version of the film. I wasn't.
Not only did the voice acting lack any kind of flair or personality, I was left scratching my head at the pacing most of all. It felt like I was watching the film on half speed. Why was everything so flow and laboured. Did the makers worry the animals faces would look weird with speech at a normal pace? I don't know. What I do know is the voice acting ruined the film. JEJ came back to voice Amiga's a again, and I'm sure he gave it his all, but it didn't work because he must have been too old to deliver the same quality of performance. They should have just used his original voice work and paced the CGI to the voice recording.
The quality of the music was also quite poor. I couldn't quite put my finger on why to specific why, I just felt like the music lacked energy or excitement. The singing for Simba, both young simba and adult simba were really poor. Again, I can only assume they were under instruction to sing slowly because the songs really didn't work.
Other than some exceptional visual effects the film really fell flat. I have given 5 out of 10 because the storyline is copied so is obviously still good. But a film this poorly made cannot get more for me.
I will only ever watch this film once whereas I'm sure I will watch the 1994 film many more times with my two boys.