Mufasa: The Lion King

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. As a prequel that tells the rise of Mufasa, Simba's father, it is very formulaic and predictable. But it is also beautifully animated, quite funny, and emotionally well-balanced between adventure, drama, humour, and tragedy. For a prequel, it plays it sometimes too safe, but that is fine to me since the audience knows the conclusion of the story. The upside of playing it safe is that the movie thankfully avoids any major distractions or side characters that could have taken away from the meat of the film. My only major gripes are that the soundtrack is forgettable compared to the Elton John classics, and some of the plot development proceeds too quickly at numerous points in the story, which takes away from its intended emotional impact.

Nonetheless, let me repeat that I am surprised by how much I liked this film. I could not be bothered by the previous CGI adaptation at all. But as far as big studio prequels are concerned, this is one of the better ones. Sure, they clearly made the film for easy money, but miraculously it respects the Lion King fanbase and oozes love for the source material. Graphically, it is well-composed and it manages to find good use for CGI that gets close to the beauty of the original animation. And although it adds little to the story, it provides enough new context and meat to make the original story shine even brighter. Nothing can beat the 1995 original masterpiece, and this one obviously pales in comparison, but I am glad that they are treating the franchise with respect.

The only good thing about this 2 hour CGI exhibition is that it will inspire you to re-watch the original Lion King to rinse off the brain rot you incur while watching it.

No heart or humanity radiates from these creepy, anthropomorphized, neutered CGI lions. The kids we went with were bored within 5 minutes. Parents, you will be checking how much time is left on your phones.

The only funny part was how awful the songs were. It felt like they were improvised first drafts of a musically inclined high schooler. A few of them mostly repeated the same line over and over again. Our whole row was laughing.

The writing and acting felt just as lacking in truth and beauty as the animation. The script felt like a first draft written with some AI assistance in a rush. The voices were badly cast and prioritized celebrity over character.

It's sad that the value placed on deep and honest storytelling continues to decline in modern cinema and that Hollywood continues to empower mediocre talent, endlessly subjecting us to this onslaught of dumbed down and recycled ideas. Movies like this, and like so many these days, are clearly made with more love and respect for the mighty dollar than their audiences.

I quite liked the story in this movie, the forced connection to the lion king and every forced location dragged it down. The music was very forgetable. The sad parts didnt hit home as it should but oh well.

Byebye.

And now i need to write 360 more characters so that i can submit this review. So here it goes. Have you ever heard the story of darth plageuis the wise? Its not a story common for the jedi. He was a baddie yes bananakin. Obi one and two dont know about it and qui and thri gon jin doesnt either. Its not a pleasant story but a story nonetheless. I wish you had heard it so that we could discussed it.

Visuals are great, but it can't hold up an overall subpar movie. Fine for kids and families but leaves originality at the door.

It does fit together some fine lore to bring us up to speed with what we know from the original movie. How it does it is rehash story elements, themes and plenty of conveniences to forcibly make the pieces fit into the original. It has similar flaire to Solo where it's just fine and uninterestingly shows or tells us where things come from in this fanfiction. Sometimes it's best to leave things a mystery if the progenitor is unceremoniously bland.

The music is fine but doesn't have the same force of fun or majesty as the original score. They're kind of just there like Moana 2's music. Not bad, but certainly not memorable.

The 3D glasses also did nothing. It felt like just a regular movie instead of them trying to do anything with with 3D.

The worst part IMO was no James Earl Jones in the actual movie. I know he's sadly passed, but they've brought back voices from other people before. If they didn't want to synthesize, they could've used unused clips or even just reused a voice clip from previous Lion King works. I can't get behind a movie called Mufasa without Mufasa's actual iconic voice somewhere in the movie.

Feels like a made for TV movie, and probably worth a watch on Disney+. But not really one I'd recommend for theatres or purchase.

The score always delivers emotionally. What I noticed is that Disney is losing, with the latest products, that double layer, the message under the surface that only adults can decipher. Maybe it's because of the story and the circumstances, but I found it too exclusive for children, especially from a director like Jenkins.

Everything else is okay. Nothing big, nothing great. You get what you go in for, emotion, fun, something that could make you feel again the feelings that you felt the first time you watched the original thing. I don't know if they're going to expand the cinematic universe.

Italian dubbing sucked. Singers can't dub. Period.