Beautiful, yet soulless

Rating: 3/10 (28 December 2019)

It's a bit of a weird time for Disney nowadays, as they seem very content with making mostly remakes nowadays. And while sometimes it can work, like with the great "Jungle Book" remake, there are times where the only thing that the remake will do is make you wonder why it even exists. This film takes the latter to a whole new level, as it is one of the weakest remakes I've ever seen from Disney. It takes everything great about the original 1994 classic and either changes absolutely nothing or does them worse. The story, premise, characters (with the exception of Timon and Pumbaa), and structure are all the exact same with little to nothing fresh about them. The facial expressions from all of the animals are incredibly static from start to finish, meaning that it's really hard to get any sort of sympathy for any of the characters, since they look bored all of the time. I understand Disney was going for realism, here, but when the lions from National Geographic show more emotion than this, then there's definitely a problem. Because of this, this was one of the most boring and predictable films I've seen in recent memory. I felt no soul or excitement. To be honest, I was mostly bored. That's not to say the movie was a complete train wreck, as the animation and CGI are incredibly stunning. They look lifelike and just beautiful throughout. The voice cast is fantastic, and everyone did a great job in trying to bring life into characters that would've been as close to dead in the face as possible without these performances. The writing of Timon and Pumbaa is the only thing that's truly new and appreciated, as they had some of the funniest lines in the film, as well as the most memorability. Aside from that, however, I am struggling to find any good reason for anyone to bother with this, as this is the exact same film as the original, but not as engaging or as fun. It's a case of flair over function, as it looks beautiful, but it's completely devoid of any of the soul or heart that made the original such a classic to begin with. Do yourself a favor and just stick with the original.