As a movie, bad. As a remake, really bad!

Rating: 1/10 (20 July 2019)

I've been trying to give these Disney remakes an honest shot. I wasn't a fan of the Beauty and the Beast remake, The Jungle Book remake, or the Aladdin remake, so I was worried going into this movie because I was originally super stoked for this. My girlfriend told me to go in with an open mind, as if it was a brand new movie. I told her I would, and I did. To say I was beyond disappointed would be the understatement of the year.
As a movie on its own, the performances were hardly convincing. The two main lions (Simba and Nala) had no chemistry. The music was pretty forgettable, as I can't even remember how the bigger numbers sounded. The animals had very blank expressions on their faces most of the time so I could barely tell how they were really feeling. Also, I had a hard time telling the difference between most of the lions. They all looked identical, so I spent a good portion of this movie trying to figure out who was who. Basically, this felt long and painful to sit through.
As a remake of the original Lion King, wow! This was terrible! They had a pretty good cast lined up, but none of them really did a spectacular job in this movie. Some of them I thought could at least partially save this movie (I was personally excited to see Donald Glover, John Oliver, Keegan-Michael Key, Beyoncé and James Earl Jones in this) but they all really let me down. It felt like the soul and joy was taken out in place for impressive visual effects. The original Lion King was alive and animated, but this one felt dead and dumbed-down. It's like they tried to copy the original without realizing what made it special in the first place. They even took out a couple crucial scenes (I won't say which ones but if you grew up with the original Lion King like I did, you'll know).
Overall, I'm not going to watch another Disney live action remake after this one. I refuse to have any more of my money go towards these awful live-action remakes. Everything that was fun in the original Lion King was sucked right out, just like with the other three remakes I saw, which leads me to believe that the other remakes (those out and those soon to be out) will be just the same.