The Reel Easy Review

The Lion King (2019): And I can honestly say I wasn’t "prepared" for what I saw.


       For this review I’m going to pretty much set aside all the was wrong about this film. Yes it’s a shot for shot remake, and yes I thought yet again after Aladdin and Dumbo the music was a bit lack lustre. But for what this film has done to revolutionise the film industry, by using this popular remake to showcase what is possible now to create in a computer graphics studio, it cannot be ignored. This new technology should not be shunned to one side, mislabelled as unimaginative, uncreative "not art" when the creation is SO beautiful!

       I was openly saying before I saw The Lion King to anyone who cared to listen to my film ramblings and rantings, that the problem with these remakes is we lose the anthropomorphic element that we engage with so readily in cartoon/animated animal films. The reason for this is it is much easier to add human like emotions and expressions, like eyebrows  to an animal cartoon character than to a photographic realistic image (see every Disney 90s/early Noughties movie from Flounder the fish to Donkey in Shrek). This makes it easier for an audience to empathise with a non human narrative in relation to these films as opposed to a documentary. This is the tricky tight rope that Jon Favero and his team were walking with the first film of this kind, The Jungle Book. In my opinion it wasn’t quite there and it's where I based a lot of my initial opinions on "Photoreeltm" (Reel-Easy's coined expression for the new art form) films . I naively believed that was the limit of that technology but The Lion King kicked it up another gear and the visuals were jaw droppingly extraordinary. There is such a tactile element to the “animation” of Africa and you keep having to remind yourself that you’re watching a something created on a computer rather than a very well sequenced documentary that just so happens to follow the story of The Lion King. I can’t wait to see what can be done with this technology, especially when it comes to original material that really holds no boundaries or limits of what is possible to depict. 

      Character wise I seem to have gone back full circle in terms of my favourite characters. When I first watched the original Lion King as a very young child, my favourite characters were obviously Timon and Pumbaa. Voiced by the brilliant Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella they were the easiest for me as a kid to relate to with their seamless comedy timing and high energy scenes, they seemed most natural behind the mic. This changed a lot with multiple viewings.

      When my sense of humor became more complex, the dry wit of Zazo, voiced by the legend of sarcasm that is Blackadder’s own Rowan Atkinson, had me in stitches. Then when I started to appreciate acting performances, Jeremy Irons and James Earle Jones as Scar and Mufasa blew me away. However, in this remake Seth Rogan and Billy Eichner with their incredibly infectious, improvisational witty banter was script wise the only fresh part of the film. There was a lot of tongue and cheek fourth wall breaks and nods back to the original that had me laughing out loud a fair few times.

       What The Jungle Book did do well in their remake is increase the plot and story line, expanding The Jungle Book's original film to include more of the Rudyard Kipling novel. In the same way as The Jungle Book increased our understanding of the "Law of the Jungle" I would like to have seen The Lion King expand on the idea of "The Circle of Life". Therefore, unfortunately despite my efforts to overlook it, the slightly lazy shot for shot attitude is what let the film down from being a real success-but you still have to appreciate what the film makers achieved.

Overall I would give this film a rating of 7/10 and a recommendation for everyone to go and see it in the cinema for the pure spectacle of the thing. Just don't expect anything else from it.


I've been Christopher Whitmore, thanks for reading and happy watching.