The Lion King (2019) Review

This live-action/CGI remake of the animated classic is a carbon copy retelling of the original.

The movie boasts a great cast with the likes of Beyoncé and Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, in the roles of Nala and Simba respectively. Not to mention bringing back James Earl Jones (the original voice of Mufasa) to voice Simba’s father once more, because it’s hard to imagine anyone else voicing the iconic character.

The CGI was great with the animals looking so realistic. The animators even got the smallest details right, for example, the twitch of Scar’s ear, the lions’ tails rising when they got mad. Probably the biggest challenge was the fact that real animals don’t show much emotion in their faces. This means the actors have to convey the emotion through their voices. Another challenge was animating the animals to walk. It doesn't look as realistic as real animals walking.

Unfortunately, the film misses out on some classic comedic scenes like “No king no king lalalala” and “The monkey’s his uncle?” Moreover, the more realistic nature of the film rules out the possibility of colourful musical numbers. This makes the songs a little drabber. Like the “I just can’t wait to be King” portion. It was more difficult to lose Zazu in this version as all the cubs could do was run through the crowd. In the animated version, Zazu was trapped under a rhino allowing the cubs to escape.

This was a textbook adaptation from director Jon Favreau, perhaps afraid to spoil the animated classic for anyone. Or maybe Disney just wanted to give audiences more nostalgia, as watching it just reminded me of my childhood. As great as the film is, we probably could do without it as it adds nothing new to the classic story. Knowing Disney, we’ll be seeing a live-action Frozen remake in around twenty years. I give The Lion King 7/10.