Slimy .... Yet satisfying .

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2019)

Here's my review of 'The Lion King'. Now I've watched a lot of movies , a LOT ! But if you ask me what is my favorite movie of all time , it's very hard to bring it down to one , but if you put a gun to my head and ask me to choose , I would say the Lion King in a split second , but not because of nostalgic reasons , but because it's just that flawless. With that being said I was talking about the original 2d movie , not this one . Before I start here's a heads up for lion King spoilers , I can't review the new one without comparing it to the original , but seriously who hasn't watched the original ? Unless you're one of those kimba protestors on Reddit.
So the Lion King is directed by Jon favreau who I believe got the job cause he made the live action jungle book and a little movie called chef which is pretty much the Lion King without scar in a food truck. And I think he's the guy who holds up the vision for this movie . Speaking of Scar , he's not even half as menacing as Jeremy irons' scar from the original , I understand how they were going a for a " live action"( cgi) scar and that they couldn't give him yellow eyes and a black mane , but the guy who played Mordo in Dr. strange voices him and he didn't work for me , Jeremy irons is up and running , I don't see why they couldn't shove 40 million down his throat and get him to come back.
Just like scar , there are a lot of new actors in this movie , like John Oliver who replaces Rowan Atkinson as Zazu , but you don't know that until the credits roll . It's like Troy Baker doing Mark Hamill's Joker voice but also doing his own thing while he's at it , I felt they should've done something similar with Scars voice. Even Pumba is replaced with Seth Rogen and he was really good . Oh yeah , Timon and Pumbaa absolutely kill it in this movie , hilarious ! Despite having different voices and live action cgi bodies , they are show stealers all the way.
I should've mentioned this at the start but this movie is gorgeous ! You just stop for a second and notice how much one can do with cgi . But the problem with a live action / cgi adaptation is that you have to remove a lot of things from the original animation , like a lot of the cartoon quirks for example . Such as the hoola distraction dance ( that still cracks me up even now ) , music videos like that shot where Simba is on top of a bunch of animals , The marching Hyenas and geysers from 'be prepared' and even little moments like scar singing to " l like a lovely bunch of coconuts " and just much more , but you get the idea. The other problem with a so called "live action" adaptation is that even though the characters have pretty much the same lines from the original , they come out as rather "stoic" than real .
Now this movie is Ctrl c and Cntrl v of the original but with cgi , so how can that go wrong ? It can go wrong if you mess with the original. The truth is they didn't change anything about the original but instead added and deleted stuff to increase the time and package it into a two hour movie . Like for example there is a scene of Nala escaping from Pride rock past the Hyenas and scar . nope . Not in the original . For those of you who don't know , there was actually a scene from the original which got scrapped for not being very pg 13 , it involves Scar forcing Sarabi to be his queen , you can even see the leaked storyboard on YouTube. And it was scrapped for the right reason. They somehow tweaked a few lines from it into this movie which felt completely unnecessary . That's the additions . The deleted stuff from the original are both big and small moments which didn't work for me at all . Big moments like Mufasas' ghost in the sky was replaced with dense clouds which doesn't resemble any shape even . Rafikis speech about the past was cut , the last shot at pride rock with Timon and Pumbaa standing next to Simba was scrapped and even that little hug Simba gives Rafiki before ascending the throne was cut too , of all the things they cut for time , they cut these iconic moments and those little lines which make such a big difference.
These are the part I was looking forward to , the songs ! And Hans Zimmer's out of the world soundtrack.When the movie began and the sun rose in Africa , I could just feel the energy among the audience who by the way were 20 something year olds or 17 at the least , no pesky kids or annoying babies. And the songs by Elton John certainly delivered even though they lacked some of the quirky comic visuals from the original , they delivered. Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is iconic as it was two decades ago , but with a few tweaks , here and there but in a good way. The thing is , if you've watched the original , you'd know the cue for when a particular soundtrack is going to play and it plays right at the stampede sequence . But for me personally , the score when Simba goes back to pride rock past the desert is the best of all and when I was pumped for the cue / drop they replaced it with some Beyonce song which didn't work at all . Speaking of Beyonce , I didn't like her voice as older Nala either. Just like some of the scenes , some of the score and songs were added and deleted as well , "be prepared" was replaced with " be prepared " but a shorter version with less energy , I understand why cause unlike the original you can't do that song without the quirky visuals and the neon colour tone. Unlike the deletes , the additional songs were actually good , especially the extended version of " in the jungle , the mighty jungle"
I know I said they only deleted and added stuff but didn't change or improvise. Guess I was wrong . You know the scene where Pumbaa beats up the Hyenas cause they call him a Pig . They replaced that with " chubby " like wtf dude ?! Either Disneys trying too much to hold on to the pg rating or kids these days are really sensitive. One of the other changes I noticed was fast cuts and reactions but I guess you can't blame them cause you have to cut from actions quick when you can't delay with emotion , since emotions come off quickly and stoic when you use cgi for a movie like this.
But nevertheless , I still had fun with this movie , had a few man tears from the very same scenes from the original , loved the father - son dynamic b/w Simba and Mufaasa and laughed hard at the Timon and Pumbaa moments . It's visually striking , more like a nat Geo safari with talking animals even , has great talents and is aware of what it is. It's the kind of movie you watch on Imax and buy on Blu-ray. Even with all that it doesn't capture the magic of the original .
In short . It was slimy .... Yet satisfying.