Will delight the children and give their parents something to think about

Rating: 8/10 (27 March 2020)

Like most children growing up in the sixties and seventies I was very familiar with Disney cartoons, and some of them, especially "The Jungle Book" and "101 Dalmatians" were among my childhood favourites. Not having any children of my own, however, I never took the same interest in the company's later offerings, including those made during the so-called "Disney Renaissance" of the nineties. I must therefore admit that I have never seen the original cartoon version of "The Lion King" from 1994.
In recent years Disney have had a policy of making live-action remakes of some of their classic cartoons, including "101 Dalmatians", "Cinderella", and "Beauty and the Beast". I understand that a remake of "Mulan" is in the offing. The 2019 version of "The Lion King" is not really a live action remake, something that would not have been possible in a film where all the characters are wild animals. Like the remade "Jungle Book" it is a photorealistic computer-animated version of the story.
The plot is similar to that of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". A king is murdered by his evil younger brother who usurps the throne which by right should have gone to his young nephew. (Shakespeare borrowed this story from an old Danish legend, but he may have been influenced by English history; he had earlier dramatised the stories of two English kings, John and Richard III, who both usurped the throne from their young nephews). The difference is that the royal family involved here are not human but a family of lions who rule over a kingdom known as the "Pride Lands" on the African savannahs; all the animals who live there, not only the lions, are regarded as their subjects. The film follows the efforts of the young prince Simba (Swahili for "lion") to recover his kingdom and to avenge the death of his father, Mufasa, at the hands of his uncle, Scar. There is also a love story involving Simba and the young lioness Nala. Two other important characters are the carefree meerkat Timon and his warthog friend Pumbaa, responsible for introducing the Swahili phrase "hakuna matata" (no worries) into English. Apart from Scar, the main villains are a gang of hyaenas.
Although the film will doubtless be popular with younger audiences, it is more than just a "children's film". Parts of it, in fact, are surprisingly deep, with political, psychological and even religious overtones. Although the story is ostensibly about animals, it falls within the literary tradition of the beast-fable in which the animal characters represent human characteristics. Simba may be a lion, but he is also the hero of a coming-of-age story about a boy's growth to manhood in difficult circumstances.
Mufasa is portrayed as an enlightened philosopher king, whose philosophy is that a true king always seeks to know what he can give to his people, not what he can take from them. Scar's political ideology, by contrast, is essentially a fascist one, based upon exalting the desire for power above all moral considerations. He presents himself as a strong leader, but paradoxically his worship of strength is rooted in a sense of his own weakness and in envy of his brother, who is stronger than him, both physically and morally. The most domineering leaders are often those who secretly believe themselves to be inferior. Simba also needs to overcome a sense of his own inferiority and unworthiness if he is to live up to his father's example. The religious element comes from the concept of the "circle of life" or interconnectedness of all living things, a concept which here is treated both as an environmental one and as a spiritual one.
I also liked the musical score; most of the songs were taken from the original film with a few new ones mixed in. I was able to add another to my list of "songs you never knew were actually from a film"; I was familiar enough with Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?", having often heard it on the radio, but did not know it was first written for the 1994 film where it is used (as it is here) as the soundtrack to the scene where Simba and Nala realise their love for one another.
The main criticism I have heard of the 2019 "Lion King" is that it is "unoriginal". Apparently it follows the plot of the 1994 version fairly closely, but never having seen that version I was not too worried about this. It is one of those family films which will not only delight the children but also give their parents something to think about. 8/10