The Lion King

2019 live-action animated remake

Rating: 12/20

Plot: It's the same as The Lion King.

Based on everything I've heard from normal people and professional movie critics, I thought this would be a lot worse than it ended up being. Actually, I thought it had a chance to be just as good as the original cartoon until the plot pounced and messed everything up. The animals and the backgrounds looked fantastic, as realistic as any nature documentary, and the camera movements were often inventive and enthralling.

Unfortunately, several problems hurt this new Lion King incarnation's chances of proving that it has a right to exist. I'll number them here for your convenience.

1) It's too long. It's got an odd problem where it's bloated but still paced so that it seems everything is moving far too quickly. It's rushed, as if the storytellers were more interested in hitting all the beats they were supposed to without really making sure anything resonated. The movie's got an odd lifeless rhythm.

2) Pumba farts too much.

3) Pumba doesn't say "Oh boy!" at all. This might seem like an odd gripe, but I was really listening for it and excited that it might happen. I have adopted a hearty "Oh boy!" into my vernacular after hearing Seth Rogan say it in a scene in Long Shot, so I really wanted Rogan to say it as Pumba. I was ready to jump out of my seat, hop down to the row below me, and high five the couple sitting there. It did come close during a scene where some hyenas are body-shaming Pumba, except it's the other one--the meerkat--who says "Oh boy" instead. I still laughed when that happened, my only laugh in a movie that was did try to throw in some humor.

4) The voice work was not very good. Not even Eric Andre does anything distinguishable here. I figured he was the second male talking hyena, but the voice work was boring. Most of the performers were fine, but few of them really stood out and added much to these characters whose lack of facial expressions didn't help the characterization. And Donald Glover, I thought, was actually kind of bad. That voice didn't really match adult Simba very well at all.

5) The songs were almost all lesser versions from the original. I don't think this is a case where the originals have just settled in or anything because as I've established before, I really don't like the songs. Well, I used to hate them, mostly because I worked at a Toys 'R' Us when the original came out and had to hear those songs all day. Once, when "Circle of Life" started playing for the 20th time during my ship, I pounced on a customer and bit into her neck. So I don't think it's just that I have this love for the original songs or anything. These songs just sounded really flat. And the music accompanying the action was often just a little too much. One added song--one that must have been Beyonce though I don't really know if I can pick her voice out of a crowd--didn't really add much at all.

6) Added scenes added very little. There's an extended sequence where Simba's future fuckbuddy flees from Scar and the hyenas which I don't remember from the original cartoon. I guess it helped explain why she ended up running into Simba later on, but I could have used more filler to help transition from scene to scene instead so that the whole thing wasn't as jumpy.

I will say this, however: an added scene with a clump of Simba fur that the camera follows on a 4+ minute journey through water, air, bird's nest, and giraffe poop is an addition that really mattered. That was my favorite part of the movie. I've always said that movies for children need more animal shit in them. This delivered although we didn't actually get to see the giraffe defecate. Maybe I'll have to grab the dvd after it's released to see if that's a bonus scene.

As I said, this is a great-looking movie, and I was almost convinced these were actual animals walking around doing all of this. The settings look great, never overly artistic like the creators were really trying to make it look anything but real. Those sunrises and sunsets, the clouds, the rock formations, etc. all looked authentic. They didn't even go overboard on the elephant graveyard.