It’s hard to imagine the story of “The Lion King” being dull, but somehow Walt Disney Pictures has taken one of their most beloved animated classics and made it so.
If you enjoyed the live-action remakes of Disney animated classics and have already made up your mind to see it, you can probably ignore this review. But if you are on the fence about it, especially if you think these remakes are a bit unnecessary, this new one will just further confirm your fears.
It’s not that the film is bad or good; it just doesn’t work at all as a live-action feature. This is the first time I can honestly say watching a movie felt like I was receiving a defective product. It lies in this weird nether zone of dysfunction: a concept that never got fully developed to its full potential. The special effects and details may shine, and the animals may look incredibly real — but therein lies the problem.
Director Jon Favreau (who also helmed the far better 2016 “The Jungle Book,”) probably had a gun to his head on this one. You can almost tell some corporate money-grubber wanted to take the concept of “The Lion King” and make it look like a nature documentary. This doesn’t even seem like a good idea in theory, because a story such as this requires emotion, expression and fantasy to tell it to the fullest. Because they have chosen to animate the animals as realistically as possible, they have limited their expressions almost purely to the movement of their mouths and their natural mannerisms. This makes them look as if they expressing little to no emotion on screen, causing a considerable disconnect by mashing up two genres of film and entertainment that were not meant to be crossed.
It also causes an issue when your voice actors are delivering a far better performance than what matches their characters onscreen. James Earl Jones and Donald Glover are fantastic as Mufasa and Simba, respectively; but their voice talents seem awkwardly far better and more emotional than the CGI animals that are speaking them, and it’s off-putting.
Being live-action and as close to photo-realism as possible is what essentially breaks the film. Firstly, as many know, “The Lion King” has always been a very musical production between the animated classic and the renowned Broadway production. Because the movie takes a fantastical tale and forces it to look as real as possible, the musical numbers are destroyed. A bunch of animals just sort of frolick around for “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” and Scar delivers a sadly watered-down “Be Prepared” as he jumps between some rocks.
This left me a bit conflicted at first, as I had enjoyed and written a positive review for 2016’s remake of “The Jungle Book.” So I went back and watched parts of that film to see what had changed for me — and I felt far better for it. The animals in “The Jungle Book” remake are far more expressive than the animals here. Baloo and Bagheera can make facial tics and movements with their eyebrows; their animations are far better lined up with their dialogue. Even the wolves and Shere Khan express more emotion than the animals here.
Between being wholly misaligned between its characters and their voice actors, the disappointing musical displays, and being a plot-for-plot carbon copy of the animated film makes this a more disheartening experience than the subpar “Aladdin” remake. Aren’t the corporate marketing folks at Disney supposed to be targeting and entertaining people in my age group with childhood nostalgia rather than putting them off with this dreck?
See it if you must. Disappointed you may be.
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“The Lion King” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.
George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.
Disney Scar with the hyenas in “The Lion King.”
