Pretty much everything you've seen before...

Rating: 5/10 (21 August 2019)

Once again, I somehow avoided these films when they were animated back in the day, but forced to go to the live action remakes today thanks to the wife. I saw the original one on VHS and it was pretty good, certainly seen a lot worse; however, I never said to myself, "This would be so much better if it were like a nature documentary". That is pretty much all they did to change this as the story is pretty much exactly the same. I cannot really fault Disney for this lazy approach to making films as the masses are eating it up like leftover spaghetti. Why make anything new, original or that isn't a comic movie as so many things have flopped badly when they try a different formula or try and adapt a novel. The best approach these days is just keep doing the same stuff and that is what this film pretty much does and though I thought it lacked a certain cuteness and expression turned into real looking animals, I cannot argue the profits it is turning.
The story, well, the king of the Pride Land and his wife have a child named Simba and the king's brother Scar who wishes to be king is not overjoyed by this arrival. He tries to hatch a plan to kill his nephew and then hatches a plan to kill the king. Simba leaves the Pride Land and meets a warthog and meerkat who teach Simba to just forget everything and don't care, but a childhood friend sends Simba back to the land of his birth to take his place as the rightful king.
The film has issues for me and the main one is the facial expression is just not there. They may as well be doing the whole using peanut butter to make it look like they are talking here. I would think with all the advancements made in computer generated graphics that they could make Simba and company look happy, sad and show other emotions and still make the animals look real. Sadly, no, they either could not or wanted this to look as real as possible; however, if you wanted that, why make the animals talk at all? May as well have taken the Milo and Otis approach and get one actor to do a voice over. Speaking of voice overs, whoever thought that not bringing back Jeremy Irons as Scar is a complete and utter moron!
So there you have it, my review of a movie that I feel was pointless to be made, but I am apparently alone in this thinking as the movie has done quite well. It is pretty much watching the Lion King again only with real animals and a strange change to daytime while, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" was being performed. Seriously? What is up with that one? Too expensive to have CGI night or something? It is cute to see the lions as cubs, but the film just lacks the power of the original. I will not call it a wasted trip to the movies though as my wife enjoyed it and she is the one who wished to see it.