Review of The Lion King (2019) by Ajzeg01 — 30 Nov 2019

Ah. My arch-nemesis in the form of a movie. We meet at last. This movie is a travesty. Don’t watch it. I would just like to leave it at that, but I guess I’ll elaborate. I guess first I will address the photo-realistic CGI elephant in the room, the animation.

Not live-action, there’s only one live-action shot in the entire movie. This is an animated film. And the animation is technically some of the most impressive ever put to screen. Seriously, this makes Life of Pi look like Madagascar by comparison.

It was absolutely mesmerizing to watch...when the animals weren’t talking. Whenever they were talking, it was awkward and laughably bad at times. What everyone has been saying is true, realistic animals cannot convey the emotions necessary for a story like this on their faces.

In some scenes, I actually had trouble telling the characters apart or even understanding what was going on in the scene because of the lack of emotion on the characters’ faces. That’s a huge problem.

I think Zazu got it the worst. Seriously, the animatronic birds in the Enchanted Tiki Room are more expressive than he is in this film! His face is frozen in a permanent frown, just like the real bird he’s based on.

The design does not fit the personality of the character at all. Same goes for most of the other characters. They were just off-putting. Speaking of the characters, how is the voice acting? While the film does feature a (mostly) talented cast, the dialogue in this movie is beyond awkward and the line delivery is just awful.

I don’t know how they possibly messed that up, but they found a way! It’s very stilted and unnatural. The line delivery coupled with the characters’ faces made me laugh out loud during Mufasa’s death scene.

Funniest **** I’ve seen in a movie all year. It’s so bad, it’s good! Look up the scene on YouTube, you’ll be in for a laugh! As for the story, it’s exactly the same as the original except they really nerfed the hyenas.

They weren’t funny and they weren’t scary. They were boring. Eric André and Keegan-Michael Key are absolutely wasted in this movie. They also cut out the best song, Be Prepared, and cut most of Rafiki’s interaction with Simba, the best scene! As for the comedy, it was just boring at best and absolutely obnoxious at worst.

I’m not the biggest fan of Timon and Pumbaa, but I’ll take the originals over these guys any day! Literally all of their jokes are self-referential. Sometimes the jokes don’t even make sense unless you’ve seen the original, which you really should not do in a remake! As for the music, the score is just as amazing as the original but the songs are pretty bad, honestly.

I already did a whole post about it months ago so I’ll try not to repeat myself, but they are either butchered, cut, shoehorned in, copied or copy-pasted! The new Beyoncé song especially sticks out like a sore thumb.

Many of the most memorable scenes from the original are dumbed-down and heavily simplified to make them more realistic, I guess, but it just goes to show how traditional animation is the only medium this film can work in.

In the 1940s, Disney was experimenting with giving the characters in Bambi a more realistic look. They decided against it and made them more stylized because the characters were not expressive enough to convey the emotions of the story.

They knew doing something like this was a bad idea in the 40s! This movie is a mistake! I think that’s all I have to say about this movie. It’s just bad. Nothing about it works as a film. Just look up the opening scene on YouTube.

That will give you just as much enjoyment as you would get from watching the whole movie. But yet again, just like Aladdin, it seems like most people disagree with me and love this movie. It’s actually now the highest-grossing animated film of all-time.

I can’t even get angry at this movie anymore. It just makes me sad. Is this what Disney has become? What was once the company that defined the industry with their creative new takes on classic stories is now just regurgitating their old movies for profit? That just depresses me, honestly.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Oh well. At least Mulan looks kind of cool. Anyway, that’s all I have to say about this POS. Don’t bother, just watch the original. That’s what I’m going to do, and I’m never going to think about this movie again.