beautiful but low-voltage as compared to the original

Rating: 5/10 (22 July 2019)

For those of you who grew up with the 1994 animated Lion King, this film is nice trip down memory lane. It's worth watching just for the exquisitely beautiful CG effects that are completely indistinguishable from reality - making the film a real landmark in cinema effects history.
But, unlike the original cartoon-animated Lion King, the film falls flat on fun-loving excitement. The characters aren't as lively, and maybe this is due to the constrains of re-telling the story with photo-realism.
Also, parts of the film are too dark for a young audience. The hyenas will give kids nightmares, the evil Scar is as creepy as the Grim Reaper.
Inexplicably, one of the funniest side-splitting scenes from the original was changed to the point of being terse. This is the scene were Timone dresses in a hula skirt and plays a ukulele to distract the hyenas. Why change it at all? Was the idea of Timone dressing in drag considered tasteless, or un-PC?
Similarly, the three hyenas came off as four-legged Three Stooges in the original film. But that nyuk-nyuk slapstick goes missing in the remake.
A wonderfully illustrated film that lacks comic energy of the original.