The Lion King, 2019, mini movie review

Rating: C+

So when's a great time to finally write a review for the latest The Lion King movie? The weekend Maleficent 2 is released. Heh, seems like a great time to me. :P  I'm hoping to see Maleficent early next week, but my Dad saw it yesterday, and the things he had issues with I'll most likely have issues with.

But with that said, I've been struggling with what to rate The Lion King.  While thinking about this post I just went back and lowered Dumbo's score from C+ to C-, and even then I might be a little generous.  That's the problem I have with reviewing!  And my doubts as a reviewer.  I change my mind!  Like when I saw The Last Jedi and I was like, "Oh my goodness!  It was so good!!!  I felt like a kid again!!!!!!!!!  Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  And then, literally, I finally woke up from the movie high coma a few days later and realized, "What the crap was that!!!!????"  Or the time I gave Austenland a super low rating, out of irritation, and now it's one of my guilty little pleasures.  Because it just is.  It makes me giggle.

So what do I do about The Lion King??  What would I have thought if Disney wasn't out of creativity and remaking everything?  How would I view this new "live action"--*cough* a different form of animation *cough*--movie if the originally drawn feature film didn't exist as comparison?  Would I think higher of it?

The problem with The Lion King (2019) is that The Lion King (1994) does exist.

And I loved the original as a kid.  Sang the songs!  The whole death scene was freaky, but the animation softens the blow.  Making The Lion King look real adds a scary depth that hand drawn animation lightens up.  The meaning is still there, but not so terrifying for children, whom this movie is aimed.  Technically a family film, but still.

Is the movie beautiful?  Yes.  It's gorgeous.  A shot by shot of the original in National Geographic style.  But the movie lost it's charm with the shift to realism.  The facial expressions in the original movie gone.  And this movie proves how sad it is that original animation is being abandoned, a form of story telling that's getting left behind for new technology.

The Lion King 2019 doesn't add anything new.  The song Be Prepared was just bad.  Scary moments are scarier.  And it's such a copy and paste that I have no need to see it again.  Why should I when I own a copy of the original?

MPAA: Rated PG for sequences of violence and peril, and some thematic elements.