The Lion King *** (2019, voices of Donald Glover, Beyoncé, Seth Rogen) – Movie Review

The lion’s share of praise for The Lion King (2019) must go to its incredible technical achievement. It looks and sounds truly amazing. So huge praise and kudos go to the visual effects and animator teams, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, production designer James Chinlund and the scorer Hans Zimmer. Oscars must probably beckon.

This film is nearly half an hour longer than the 1994 animated version of The Lion King and it feels it. The story is thin for a two-hour blockbuster movie: After the murder of his father Mufasa (James Earl Jones) by his embittered, ambitious uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the young lion prince Simba (voice of JD McCrary) flees for his life from the lion kingdom.

He meets a couple of nice new chums, Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) and Timon (Billy Eichner), and grows up to be adult Simba (Donald Glover) and returns to the kingdom to sort stuff out with Scar, who has usurped the throne and taken over as Lion King. That’s it.

Do we need another version of The Lion King after the 1994 animation and the stage show? No, not really. They have disguised the idea that this is basically a musical really well. We probably couldn’t have had humans dressed in lion costumes for the movie, so a second animation was the only obvious route. Oh, but then we have already had an animation. Oh, well, that worked, so why not have another one?

Lindiwe Mkhize gets things off to a good start by singing Circle of Life, Beyoncé, Donald Glover, Billy Eichner, and Seth Rogen perform Can You Feel the Love Tonight, Chiwetel Ejiofor performs Be Prepared (2019), Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, JD McCrary, and Donald Glover perform Hakuna Matata, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen perform The Lion Sleeps Tonight , Beyoncé sings Spirit and Billy Eichner sings Be Our Guest. There are lots of songs. It is a musical, though the music arises naturally and effortlessly from the show. It doesn’t just stop for a quick tune, then start up again.

Director Jon Favreau’s main achievement is keeping it quite dynamic. It is all very slick, sleek and painless. It is good, safe, middle-brow entertainment. But it is too thin and insubstantial, way too cosy and sentimental, and of course naturally all too familiar. When you strip away the 2019 gloss, it plays like an old-fashioned Disney movie, with its cuddly talking animals and irritating wise-cracking comedy relief. There is way too much of Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) and Timon (Billy Eichner), and they have way too few amusing lines to support it.

Favreau tries to hide the old-fashioned Disney movie thing by bringing on a couple of very strong sequences of violence and peril that stretch the PG idea beyond its limit, and had a couple of kids screaming at the screening. There are also one or two thematic elements to keep the adults interested and not bother the kids. Everybody will be too busy swallowing the half-witted pseudo-mystical  nonsense of the Circle of Life and Hakuna Matata, and the idea that nobody ever dies, to get too upset by anything a tiniest bit challenging here.

Of course it will be sensationally popular. But who is it actually for? Parents who know the material from before will feel safe to take their kids who may be seeing the story unfold for the first time. Mums will feel comfortable and dads can sit back and enjoy the technical achievement. But now can we move on?

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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