The Lion King

The animators have done an excellent job in terms of authentic portrayals of living creatures and nature, ensuring that the animation is absolutely breath-taking, and many shots look as if they came from natural history documentaries. The problem is that The Lion King is not a documentary from the African savannah, but rather a musical from Disney, in which the animals talk and sing, and this truly does not work well together with photo-realistic animation. In order to achieve the greatest possible credibility, the animal heroes were deprived of all "human" facial expressions, and therefore the only emotions in their dialogues are the voices of their voice actors, which leave something to be desired. The story (basically Hamlet) is no different from the animated version (except that it’s half an hour longer) and it's still understandably great, but it just doesn't have much to surprise you with if you've seen the original The Lion King. The new The Lion King is a technologically perfect, but otherwise somewhat soulless copy of its much better predecessor. (03/10/2020)

The essence of sterility. Beautiful yet pointless. I wonder what Favreau's role as director was. It couldn't have been more than sending out two mass emails: one to the actors "put on The Lion King and say the same thing", and the other to the thousands of hopefuls behind the rendering computers "put on The Lion King, forget the emotions in the faces and otherwise do the same thing using CGI and share the result with me in a few years". There is not a single ounce of invention, no interpretation, let alone an original idea. On the other hand, the glitz is so intoxicating and the original material and music so catchy that if you have to take your kids to see it, at least it won’t a complete waste of time. (02/08/2019)

A new version of the classic Disney story about Simba, who grew from a little lion cub into the king of animals and avenged his father's death. The new Lion King looks incredibly realistic, but the moment the animals start talking and singing, it starts to fall apart. The fairytale atmosphere where no one bothered with the chatty animals is gone, and in its new form it all feels a bit out of place. Still, it's an inoffensive adventure that will appeal to older viewers with its nostalgia and younger ones with its songs and lots of animals. But it is far from an exceptional film. (23/07/2019)

I felt as uncomfortable watching the new Lion King as I would have felt watching natural history documentaries with narration that jokingly imitates the “voices” of animals. At the same time, it is an inordinately long (and drawn-out) film, very dark (the hyenas could sign up for a horror-movie casting call) and verbose, i.e. not very suitable for younger viewers who would most likely appreciate the talking fauna. I very much enjoyed Caleb Deschanel’s camera work, which was adapted to the characters’ point of view, and one wordless scene including the odyssey of a dung beetle with a ball of giraffe droppings. Otherwise, a negative feeling of inappropriateness predominated. When you see a photo-realistically animated (and talking) warthog and a (talking) meerkat tame a (talking) lion cub and turn it into an entomophage, it is more disturbing than funny or cute. Whereas I can still be impressed by the original to this day, the reboot just makes me want to cry over the idea that it will be a huge commercial hit and Disney will continue to churn out such empty, asexual, absolutely unsurprising remakes of its successful films. The Jungle Book had a faster pace and more convincing characters, and it did not merely copy the original film, but developed it in a meaningful manner. It was unique in some way. Conversely, The Lion King is only a soulless imitation, perhaps technologically perfect, but almost worthless artistically. 50% (18/07/2019)

A beautiful visual aspect and Hans’s faultless, Oscar-winning composition. A remake of one of my favorite kids’ movies with a minimum of changes, which suits me just fine. More action scenes and a little more romping in the perfectly rendered countryside do nothing but good. I liked the voice of James Earl Jones and Seth Rogen is fantastic as Pumba. (09/11/2019)