A sad disappointment with no real Purpose

Rating: 3/10 (13 October 2019)

Positives first. Seth Rogen is nice addition to the voice cast and is actually very funny with the way he delivers his lines, especially paired with Billy Eichner's Timmone. Visually speaking a lot effort was clearly put into this film by visual effects artists that deserve a lot of credit. However, the visual effects are also to the movies detriment, which i will get into.
moving away from positives lets say that there is no soul to this film. To talk about this movie i will compare it to the original because after all it is a re-make. I see it to be completely fair to hold it to the high standard previously set by the 1994 Classic.
Most notably about this re-make is the new visuals that look great, but hinder the movie completely. Because of the life like animal effects no emotion is felt in any of the characters faces. In fact they come across as soulless for the entire run-time. So we as the audience rely heavily on the voice cast to carry emotions, which they do not do very well. Donald Glover is actually the weakest link in this movie with no feeling at all in his performance, same goes for Beyonce. Which is truly a shame as they are incredibly talented individuals, Another issue to find with this film is how dull and boring the musical numbers now look. "Be prepared is not only shortened in length but is just Scar climbing a rock. "I just can't wait to be king" is just a lot of animals running through a large puddle. gone are the vibrant colours and visuals of the first movie, there was no heart in these musical sequences. The fantastical,animation from 1994 is completely lost and not replaced with anything worth while or fun. In fact there is nothing fun with this new 2019 re-make.
There is no real passion to be felt behind this film, there is no feeling that Jon Favreau (who i personally think is wonderfully talented) wanted to make Lion King movie. This film exists purely to make money, which it has so we shall be treated to more wonderfully dull Disney re-makes. If i could sum up this film i would describe it as a time vampire.
Overall if you want to watch a fun film about musical Lions watch Lion King 1994 or why not even Lion King 2: Simba's Pride.