'Lion King' 2019 - eye candy without a soul
The photorealistic, computer-animated remake of “The Lion King” touts some of the most impressive visual effects ever committed to screen. The lions look real. That’s about the only thing positive to say about Disney’s hollow and stilted cash grab.
Anything that works in director Jon Favreau’s remake relies on a prior connection to the first movie. The dialogue is rehashed nearly word-for-word, but the film’s commitment to realism robs every character moment of the nuance and emotion that blossomed in the original animated form. Famous voices try to emote the classic material, but the words come out of vacant, blank faces.
Consider the crucial scene where cub prince Simba finds himself trapped in a wildebeest stampede, and dad/king Mufasa meets his end at the hands of scorned brother Scar. In the original, the terrific vocal work of James Earl Jones and Jeremy Irons were enhanced by the animation that provided distinct and fully emotive visual performances. You felt the betrayal in the characters’ eyes. Similarly, Simba’s final moments with his father left kids of a certain generation devastated because of how well the filmmakers presented Simba’s grief with a combination of vocal and visual performance.
The new movie recreates these iconic moments, sometimes down to the exact framing. Yet the characters’ faces are completely stripped of expression. It’s a crucial and crippling example of how the entire movie fails to justify its own existence.
Hans Zimmer’s famous score returns, though Favreau and co. even manage to miscue it in some cases. The refreshed songs lack the energy of the original, and sequences like “Just Can’t Wait to Be King” and “Be Prepared” have been stripped of all their visual verve and theatricality. “Be Prepared” is especially butchered. Jeremy Irons’ Scar might be one of Disney’s greatest animated villains, so maybe Favreau deliberately tried to swing away from that style, and Chiwetel Ejiofor (a great actor) actually seems to be trying something unique and darker with his vocal performance. Too bad the animation portrays the character as “lion with a scar on his eye” and nothing else.
Only Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen deliver anything close to memorable performances in “The Lion King.” The animation on Timon and Pumba is just as blank as every other character, however Eichner and Rogen’s energy push through the uncanny CGI valley better than everyone else.
“The Lion King” made a disgusting amount of money last weekend, enticing moviegoers of a certain age (myself included) with nostalgia and the promise of giving a similar big screen magic for a new generation. Disney practically begged me to take my four kids to the theater in the hopes they feel something like I did when I saw the original (three or four times) in the theater back in 1994.
Don’t fall for the trap. “The Lion King” from 1994 is a genuine classic. Favreau and Disney know this, because they spend most of the new “Lion King” hoping your love of the original will outshine the new movie’s complete lack of personality and charm. What good are photorealistic images if those images can’t deliver any real feeling?
“The Lion King” is what happens when a corporate entity exploits a generation that already spends too much time equating their childhood happiness with products and pop culture. I’m as guilty as anyone in that regard, but at some point we all have to recognize how much we’re being conned.
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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.