Poor beginning, great middle, decent end

Rating: 7/10 (19 July 2019)

The original Lion King is one of my most favourite films of all time, so I was excited to see this movie and how it compares.
I found the first third of the movie to be very flat, bar the opening song a lot of the time it felt like the voice actors were not performing their roles with the same passion as the original, the loss of a lot of the original voice actors didn't help with this, the greatest loss being that of Jeremy Irons Scar. In addition the song 'can't wait to be king' failed to be as magical and the less said about the butchering of 'be prepared' the better. 5/10
Happily from the gorge scene onwards the films picks up, becoming a lot more fun and entertaining, Timon and Pumbaa are fantastic with a lot of what seem like improvised lines as well as additional scenes that help to flesh out the movie, the second song from Timon & Pumbaa is also a particular highlight. 9/10
As the film moves into its finale there are a lot of echoes of the original movie however though enjoyable it doesn't quite hit its predecessors grandeur, regardless of this it was still highly enjoyable. 8/10
Overall I did enjoy watching this movie and would certainly recommend watching it to anyone who isn't sure, just be aware that it is not quite as good as the original masterpiece.
Overall score 7.3/10 rounded down to 7/10 for IMDb