The Lion King (2019) Review

Rating: 1/10 (21 July 2019)

What a pathetic, unnecessary, crappy cash grab. Don't get me wrong, I love the original film a lot and I like Jon Faverou but both don't mix well together. Here are the few positives. Obviously the film looks visually impressive but that leads to some problems later. Most of the voice cast does a fine job. Especially Donald Glover, Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, and John Oliver. That's where the positives end. Here are the negatives. This is essentially a shot for shot remake of the original film. There is almost nothing new except a new song which is played in the background and extended scenes of pointless scenery and a single piece of Simba's hair flying across the desert. I give some credit to the other live action remakes for at least trying to do something different, even if they didn't work but this film does almost nothing new at all. It played it safe which was the wrong direction. Some of the voice acting isn't great. James Earl Jones sounds like he wasn't even trying. It sounds like he recorded all of his lines in one take and then went home. Chiwetel Ejiofor makes Scar seem like a pathetic loser. He just fails to capture that spine tingling and energetic performance of Jeremy Irons. The songs besides Circle of Life and Can You Feel the Love Tonight just are underwhelming especially Be Prepared which for some reason was cut short. The musical score is fine but it feels like they just copy and pasted the score from the original instead of making new renditions of the score. Even if the CGI is impressive, it also serves to the film's detriment. You can't relate to the characters because the visual effects don't allow them to convey any emotion. An example would be Mufasa's death. The actor voicing young Simba does a good job conveying his grief with his voice but Simba literally has a blank stare on his face the entire time. This is a problem throughout the entire film. The animals express almost no emotions. That's the beauty of the animation style of the original. Because it was animated, the animators had free liberty to make the animals express in whatever way they wanted. Another problem would be that some of the more important moments are shorter in this film than the original. The stampede scene was about 5 minutes while in this one it feels shorter which is odd because the film is almost 30 minutes longer than the original. This all begs the question. What was the point of this film? Obviously money but there's no point to the film. It's just the same thing that is somehow almost 30 minutes longer. Overall, The Lion King is visually impressive but fails at recapturing the beauty, scope, and emotional weight of the original animated film. I give The Lion King (2019) a 1/10.