User reviews

This remake manages to suck all the life out of the original. It really is like watching National Geographic while hearing The Lion King (1994) on in the other room. There is a total disconnect between what you are seeing on-screen and what you are hearing or supposed to feel-so much that I am surprised this was not noticed early on and left on the cutting room floor. Baloo in Favreau's The Jungle Book (2016) alone should have been a warning sign.

At its best, the soundtrack is only as good as the original. I was waiting out for Beyoncé and Donald Glover hoping maybe they would save it with charm, humor, or chemistry, but Beyoncé oversings/overacts and Glover's few moments just aren't enough. John Oliver does steal his scenes as Zazu and I'm a fan of Scar's character design. Visual effects are extremely well done, but for a production that looks so true-to-life, most of the film is lifeless.

Very disappointed.

As expected, the movie opens with possibly, IMO, the greatest opening scene EVER in the history of movies. The song, the scale, it's all pretty close to the original, even if one or two notes are deliberately sung differently.

Visually, the movie looks great. I wouldn't go as far to say it looks incredible, but it does look pretty good. But that's about it. Like so many people, I have seen the original so many times, I can almost recite every line word for word. And that's where the problem starts. A lot of the wisecracks and humor has been discarded with, for no apparent reason.

So many of my favourite one-liners and jokes have been replaced with bland, instantly forgettable lines. Beyonce just overdoes all her lines, and the new song they slotted in, Spirit, was just flat and pointless, even in its two minutes of existence.

For anyone who hasn't seen the original (and I realised there were actually quite a few of those in the audience with me), it might just be an average movie. For those of us who grew up with it over the past 25 years, it is a disappointing, flat, soul-less money grab by Disney and they should be ashamed of it. But of course, they aren't. It's all about the money, and not the heart, even though that's what Disney used to claim all those years back.

The recent Jungle Book, which came out a couple of years ago, was much better than this movie in every aspect. Such a sad indication of what Disney has become.

This remake was OK. Understandably so, the CGI artists were limited by what they could do with animals and their faces. Since there was no easy way to convey emotion through facial expression, it had to fall of the vocal tonage of the actors, but sadly many of the scenes just felt emotionless and the voice acting didn't feel or look right at parts. It's just not a movie that works well with hyper-realism.

The first half of the movie is pretty cringey as the voice actor for Simba did not do a good job of conveying emotion. He often stressed the wrong words which made for awkward transitions and made Simba seem like an entitled brat.

The second half was completely saved by Seth Rogan. Thankfully. But even then, Beyoncé needed to CHILL with the riffing in the songs. The constant riffing felt like she was trying too hard and changing the songs to make them worse, not better. I get that that's her thing and she may feel creative freedom, but the songs were not composed to be sung with that style.

Visually it was well done but..... As far as the emotion goes it was not there. They tried to make it a drama. But with no emotion in the characters. I was VERY disappointed. One of my favorite movies of all time ruined here. I don't think the actors were in the same room reading their parts. I think everyone went home with their part read the lines into a recorder attached the recording emailed them back to the studio someone pieced it all together and said here you go Lion King 2019

It's always a shame when people think "more realistic" means "better" when it comes to animation.

The original "Lion King" wasn't made as a handdrawn, cartoony movie, because they simply didn't have the technology to make it look more realistic. Of course, they didn't have the tech to make it look like todays CGI movies, but they certainly could have drawn the characters to look more like actual lions.

But they didn't. Because why would you? Despite all the animals in the leading roles, we are still dealing with characters, with emotions and personalities, which real animals can't really express in the same way. Cartoony animals can. And in the original movie, they do. And the emotionial resonance that movie had sticks with so many people up until today. And can even be felt by people, watching it today for the first time.

None of this is true for this remake.

It recreates large parts of the movie shot by shot, the dialogues are often lifted straight from the original... but it doesn't have any of the charm, the emotion or the LIFE the original still has.

The entire concept behind this remake is so misguided. It's like remaking a Looney Toons cartoon with foto realistic animals. If you're trying you are clearly missing something.

Obviously the CGI is spectacular. It really is. It's a technical marvel, this movie! And I can't imagine how many people and hours it took, to put this together!

But what's the point, when, at the end of the day, the story telling is worse than in the movie it used as template? And make no mistake, the storytelling IS worse. Aside from the fact that the characters are incapable of showing emotions and lack ANY personality (my god, what have they done to Scar, one of the most charismatic villains in Disney canon?) because of that insistance on making it look "realistic", even the script and details in the presentation are worse. What works about the story of this movie is the stuff that was already good in the original. And every change they made is for the worse. The humor is a lot more cringe, the voice acting at times is really bad (couldn't they have hired a voice actor for strong, majestic Mufasa that didn't sound THIS old and tired?).

Great, they got John Oliver as Zazu. Because he looks a bit like an odd bird, is British and that's funny. So let's just replace Zazu's character with John-Oliver Comedy. Because he's not here to enrich the world, story or the character, he's here so we can slap his name on a poster and get internet-credit-points.

Awesome, we have Beyonce as Nala! Awesome! Of course because of the attempts at "realism", her character literally can't be told apart from the rest of the female lions (to the degree that they had to add random voice lines that CALL HER Nala, because otherwise nobody would know that it's her when they see her). And her performance doesn't add anything to the character. But WE HAVE BEYONCE, slap it on the poster, she's not there for the story or the character, she's there for the marketing.

We have JD McCrary as Simba!

He can sing and he's famous on the internet with the kids!

He can't really voice act, but that doesn't matter. Nobody will care about this Simba, they'll just fill in the gaps the lack of personality leaves with their memories of the Simba from the original.

This has to be the most corporate, empty, committee designed movie I have experienced in a while, and I do consider it an issue that it didn't only make a lot of money, but there are legitimatelly people who consider it an "upgrade" or "the modern version" of this story.

It's not. The original is the "modern version", because the original is genuinly timeless.

This version... No child growing up today will remember this movie in the way the original gets remembered today. People won't come back to this movie in a decade, in the way they come back to the original even today.

Because this movie will age. Heck, 3 years later, it already looks outdated in some places. That's the nature of a tech demo. Once the original flash of the moment when that tech was cutting edge has gone, people will lose interest.

What will stick are characters and story. And for THAT, you'll always be better served with going back to the 1994 masterpiece.

Disney has decided to have live action remake of its classic cartoons with mixed critical results so far. The box office though has been very good.

The Lion King is not even live action though. It is a CGI version of the 1994 animated movie.

The Lion King cartoon was a kid friendly version of Hamlet. Young cub Simba's father is killed by evil brother Scar but Simba blames himself as he does not know the truth of what actually happened.

I would have thought director Jon Favreau would had shaken up the story but it is almost a straight remake of the 1994 cartoon.

However this remake has a longer running time and it showed. I felt listless as the movie went on. I realised the film lacked energy because it knew it was a bland copy.

I was sooo excited to see this movie! I love the original Lion King so much, I feel so let down by this. The pacing felt weird, the voice acting felt very flat and lifeless, and don't even get me started on Beyonce.

I felt generous giving this a 4/10, and that was mostly because this movie, while pretty terrible, looked absolutely gorgeous.

Please, for the love of all things Disney, watch the original instead.

This movie is a very boring copy of the original but with no emotions what so ever! What a waste of time and money!

The acting made me just want to go home and watch the original movie.

This review might contain spoilers on the plot line, but hey... if you don't know the plot line you probably don't live on earth.

Let me start by saying, I absolutely love the original Lion King film, and the musical. That's also why I was highly anticipated to see this. And I must say, it's visually stunning, and it took me back to the old days. But unfortunately, they did something terrible to the script.

The film lacks character depth in pretty much every character, this is mainly caused by the fact that all dialogues are rushed. It's like they cut half an hour of dialogue from the original, and also took away all the pauses. This has the effect that you just don't "feel" the story anymore. You don't feel the paternal bond between Simba and Mufasa, you don't feel the internal struggle that Scar goes through and you can't feel any love tonight between Nala and Simba.(pun intended)

There are many parts that illustrate this, but one that particularly sums it up well: The moment that Nala and Simba see each other again, after being separated for years. It starts with Nala chasing Pumba in a scene that could have been taken straight from the "earth" series. It looks absolutely amazing and takes quite some time. Then Simba comes into play, he and Nala fight a bit, they recognize each other, share a "where have you been for all this time" and a "you need to come back" and the scene ends. I haven't measured, but I'd say this scene is about 4 minutes chase, and about 30 seconds of dialogue, while it should have been the other way around. It just completely doesn't cover the emotional charge that it should have had. To me this scene pretty much sums up the movie.

So is it all bad? No, again, it looks awesome! And it takes you back to the old days! So I would still advise you to go see it, but make sure you do it in imax or Dolby digital, to really get the best out of it.

Oh and one last thing, I absolutely loved the casting. Especially Jon Oliver as Zazu. But they really swung and missed on Beyonce. Her voice just doesn't match the character. If they would have cast her for Sarabi (Simba's mom) I would have thought it would have been spot on, but I think the problem is we all know that Beyonce is in her late 30's and Nala's supposed to be a young adult.

Visually stunning but the realism of the characters ended up taking the emotion out of the expressions and there was a disconnect

Let me preface this review by saying that my complaint is not with the film's ability (or lack thereof) to get "realistic looking", digitally crafted lions to emit a variety of emotions through facial expressions. I don't think any of us put too much stock in that aspect. What most people are referring to is the film's lack of verbal emotion. While Donald Glover and Beyoncé command the stage for their own styles of music, their performances in the movie's songs fell very flat. Neither of them were able to convince me of the emotion we take for granted in the original. The voices they provide for the characters didn't quite match up to who we remember as Simba and Nala. I'm afraid I have to agree with most of the reviews that the movie fell very flat creatively and emotionally. I felt like the voice cast didn't quite match what most of us were probably anticipating, considering how great they are on their own. The scenes with Mufasa definitely lacked the majesty (no pun intended) that he brought to the 1994 film. It was still tear-jerking listening to his voice. That was one casting they did right. Jeremy Irons needed to be scar. The performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor wasn't by any means lacking - on the contray, his Scar was still very menacing. Jeremy Iron's "Be Prepared" (Jim Cummings sang most of the song) was unfortunately changed to the point that it was almost laughable. Chiwetel wasn't able to bring the same "Villainy" to Scar as Jeremy. Iron's voice was definitely needed to bring more credibility to their claim of honoring the original. Rafiki's voicing was also underwhelming. Robert Guillaume was missed dearly in the 2019 remake. His iconic portrayal of the beloved character would've been one of this remake's saving graces. John Kani brought his own interpretation, which tended to be a much more solemn and "peaceful watcher" Rafiki compared to the vivacious and witty Rafiki from the 1994 version. However, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogan have great chemistry and I felt they paid homage to Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella. Hans Zimmer's original score was almost the same in the remake and it definitely held the film together. The graphics and detail in a majority of the film are breathtaking. The fight scene between Simba and Scar is so intense and incredibly shot. So, if you're looking for a film that has beautiful landscapes, is visually stunning, and brings you to a special place, then see the movie. But be warned that the overall experience may be lack-luster.

Regarding people who are praising this movie and saying those who gave it negative reviews don't understand or love Disney, I've seen this on Broadway more than I wish to admit and I've gone through 2 VHS of this film growing up. I love Disney. We're DVC members. My appreciation for Disney isn't lacking, however this film didn't inspire or evoke deep emotions like the original. Please trust the professional critics on this one. For once I will agree they got it right.

Sadly I felt that the actors had no heart to this movie. Even the returning of our beloved mufasa (James Earl Jones) didn't put any fire to his character. I felt that pumba and timone stole the show with their whitty banter and They truly showed heart for their parts. In all it looks pretty but a sad let down as far as acting goes.

Honestly you won't notice a difference.

Great cgi but it's basically a shot for shot remake that manages to cut out everything that made the cartoon charming, including the "Be Prepared" number. Definitely a remake we didn't need.

There is something seriously off about this movie. The visuals are absolutely stunning but you think with all that effort they could give the faces a little more expression. There is disconnect between the script, the voice actors, and the characters expressions on almost every character.

Baby Simba was by far the worst. The emotion in the voice never matched the scene. Mufasa was a decent voice but the animation was lifeless and his lines (that weren't copied) were super cheesy and didn't make me care about him. Scar and the hyenas were probably some of the best characters in the movie. Scars face could have used a bit more expression but the voice acting was terrific. I was rooting for them after watching baby simba and mufasa for the first half of the movie. Child Nala was bearable but adult Nala was actually pretty good. Adult Simba was good in parts and terrible in others. Pumbaa was probably the best character in the movie. Seth Rogan did a fantastic job and made the character similar to the original but also made it his own. Timon's voice didn't really match the expression on the character but his lines were funny. Zazu was pretty good and had good lines but it took a while to get used to the animation.

I really liked the addition of some of the jungle animals and much of the jungle scenes were very fun to watch. They followed the same plot but were changed just enough to make it enjoyable. The rest of the movie is practically a carbon copy of the original but with less emotion. Some of the plot holes from the original were filled in which was nice but in an effort to make it hyper realistic, a lot of the fantastical scenes were altered.

Overall, it was pretty boring as it is exactly the same movie as the original, except that the characters are lifeless and have childish scripts. Don't bother watching this unless solely for the the visual effects. Don't give Disney any benefit from their complete lack of creativity. They butchered a fantastic opportunity. By far the worst remake so far.

As much as the live-action adaptations from Disney have been controversial as of late, the live-action of The Lion King (despite being all rendered as CGI) is without a doubt, the most pointless and unnecessary live-action remake to date.

Nothing about this remake improves anything and it even doesn't take a risk. It's utterly shot-for-shot, which almost draws unfavorable and negative comparisons to the infamous Gus van Sant's 1998 remake of Psycho (a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho), of which The Lion King original and the remake had the same story, with the remake giving no further improvement. The difference of the two, in terms of the technique, is that the original features traditional hand-drawn animation, whereas the remake features photorealistic CGI animation.

Another problem that The Lion King remake faces, is with the inability of the CGI lions to convey emotions and its difficult translation of its voice talents within the emotions of the CGI lions, which makes it difficult for audiences to relate to the lion characters' emotions and its expressions, which can turned towards uncanny valley.

Another problem within this remake have, comes with the voice acting performances and the results are truly underwhelming, to say the least. Donald Glover and Beyonce are seem to be miscasted as both Simba and Nala, and despite their incredible singing performances and particularly their rendition of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" song, their voice acting comes as the weakest. Chiwetel Ejiofor tries to bring his unique style and menacing qualities as Scar but falls short to the more superior Jeremy Iron's Scar. John Oliver serves as a poor substitute for Rowan Atkinson as Zazu. Worse of all, Alfre Woodard's, John Kani's, Keegan-Michael Key's and Eric Andre's voice performances, were underutilized and wasted.

Still, The Lion King remake is not without its redeemable qualities. Even with the problems of the CGI lions in its difficult expression of emotions, much of the CGI qualities of the lions as well as other animals is featured as utterly realistic, which makes it the most mind-blowing CGI creations that the animals are featured into cinema, given the fact that the technology that was used in The Jungle Book was used to the higher degree within this remake, of which that use of the visual effects being displayed in this remake as groundbreaking.

Out of all the voice cast, only a few stand-out as the best; with Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen giving out their best chemistry and performances as Timon and Pumbaa, nearly stealing the whole show. Other stand-outs within the movie, were James Earl Jones as Mufasa (a performance that remains endearing and powerful, despite being oddly weary and underutilized), Florence Kasumba as Shenzi, JD McCrary and Shahadi Wright Joseph as both the younger versions of Simba and Nala.

In the end, The Lion King remake features no heart, vitality, spirit, magic, mysticism, and power that the original possesses, and is considered as inferior to the 1994 animated original. The Lion King remake is considered as a massive disappointment and will end up age horribly, whereas the 1994 animated original remains as a superior and timeless masterpiece that will remain to stand the test of time, and for generations to come. All the visual effects in the world cannot replace the pure Disney magic that was brought to life by the original entire cast and crew in the 1994 animated masterpiece.

I've always loved "The Lion King." I grew up with the original movie, and always have absolutely loved it. I saw the stage show in Washington, D.C. about a decade or so ago. Even though I haven't always been receptive to the idea of Disney remaking animated classics (as that sometimes seems rather "cash grab"-esque in my book,) I was genuinely excited for this one given the strong connection I have to the original, as well as its seemingly outstanding voice cast and music. Even if the film ended up being somewhat of a cash grab, it would be an entertaining nostalgia rush good enough for me to be perfectly content with having my cash grabbed by the Mouse House. Sadly, the film is actually quite poor and does not even come remotely close to the quality of the original. The 1994 "Lion King" is a masterpiece, and I was never expecting them to top it, but the fact that such a talented cast and crew made something this inferior is highly problematic.

Since we all know the plot of the story, I won't spend time spelling out the main storyline here. What I will first note is that the film's photorealistic CGI feels incredibly realistic, but fails outright at generating the emotion and colorfulness present in the original. This leads to many musical numbers that are far less interesting than the original. Gone are the exuberant smiles and "choreography" of the characters during songs like "I Just Can't Wait to be King" and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" Instead, we just see CGI lions trying to hop over each other and run side by side, which ends up being a lot less interesting. ("The Circle of Life" is still outstanding, but that's one of the only things to genuinely like about this remake.) The realism of the CGI also severely limits the emotion conveyed in the film, which makes moments of heightened emotion in the story feel regrettably blasé. For such a talented voice cast, the voice acting isn't as strong as you would expect. Donald Glover and Beyoncé are fine, but underwhelming. James Earl Jones is terrific as Mufasa, but his character is (sadly) far less developed compared to the original. The lack of character development pertaining to both Mufasa and Nala compared to the original are both pretty striking, and completely reduces this remake of much of the charm the original had. Some of the supporting cast ends up being pretty annoying at times, like Seth Rogen voicing Pumbaa. Finally, the script is far more lowbrow and cheesy than the animated version, regrettably settling for juvenile jokes and the lowest common denominator of plot development even in the middle of musical numbers like "Hakuna Matata."

The 1994 "Lion King" is a masterpiece and one of the best animated films ever made, but this remake is an astonishing disappointment. It's not unwatchable by any means, but it's definitely not good--and, even more unexpectedly, forgettable. Stay home and watch the animated version again. 4/10

Note: I saw the film in 3D because it was filmed that way, and I wanted to see how the "photorealistic" CGI technology was in 3D. It ended up making no difference besides making the image a bit darker, which was disappointing. The only really good 3D during the whole experience was in the "Spies in Disguise" trailer before the feature.

With the success of Faverau's Jungle Book and the leaps forward in CGI technology, it was only going to be so long before a Disney exec thought of doing a remake of their most successful film during the Disney Renaissance. But they were so preoccupied with whether they could recreate the Lion King almost shot for shot that they never stopped to think whether they should. The end result will undoubtedly be a massive money maker for Disney by capitalizing on the success of one of their greatest films, but it's also quite possibly the most creatively bankrupt film to come out this year.

We all know the plot of the first film and this remake follows the original almost verbatim. So much of the dialogue is just taken word for word out of the original and many shots are so identical that I'm convinced that they just used stills from the original as storyboards. Other than one extra scene showing how Nala set off on her journey where she finds Simba and some extended sequences following some random animals unrelated to the plot, including an adept metaphor for the film where we're forced to watch a beetle pushing around a large piece of dung, there's very little here which departs from the original story.

So if this does follow the original so closely then how did it turn out so bad? To start off with, as impressive as some of these photo realistic animations are this style wasn't well suited for the Lion King. Instead of having the expressionistic and lively characters from the original, we get these lions who are unable to emote and deliver on the films emotional moments. It's very difficult to connect with these characters since they just can't convey as much visually as the original was capable of and characters like Mufasa just don't resonate in the same way.

The original animated films more minimalistic style also works to its advantage so that shots flow together smoother and allows for quicker edits because we are capable of reading all the information in a shot in a shorter amount of time. The heightened realism of this remake just isn't capable of doing this as it needs to hold on its shots just so we can absorb all the information on screen. Plus on a more simplistic level, the original animation just looks better. The epic scale of some of the shots in that film feel permanently engraved in my mind, but whilst the remake has me appreciate the effort and time that animators must have put in to these shots it just doesn't deliver on the same sense of awe it attempts to recreate from the original.

Then there's the new cast and in spite of having a lot of great names attached to the film, it ends up feeling as if the characters are going through the motions of the story with little emotional weight. Very few of the performances are able to bounce off one another effectively and feel completely disconnected from their surroundings. This is with the exception of some of the comedic support like Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner and John Oliver who were all entertaining. Though this is partly because these seemed to be the only characters where the actors brought their personalities to the role and felt like they delivered on some funny lines.

But my biggest gripe of this film is it's complete lack of originality. Most of these remakes of Disney animated classics have copied the originals they were based on, but they all added at least something to the story. Even for as much as I disliked the live action Beauty and the Beast, they still made some attempts to improve characters like LeFou and tried to add their own ideas to how the curse works. But here they don't try to add anything substantially different to the characters or story, instead only adding new shots of the surrounding nature to show off the photo-realistic animation and pad out the films run-time.

They even skip over some of the small moments that made the original film so incredible to begin with. One example is how they take out Rafiki's lesson about how the past can hurt and instead just cut to Simba running off to catch up with Nala. This is replaced by a montage of the two Lions running across the wild to a new Beyonce song, which feels completely out of place and was likely just added to the film so they could sell an extra Beyonce song on the films soundtrack.

Ultimately the film just feels like a carbon copy of the original. It's like listening to someone speak the lyrics to a great song, all the words are there but it lacks the same beat which made the song connect with you to begin with. Whilst it's not necessarily the worst film of the year, but it is definitely the most pointless.

Jon Favreau should stick to marvel films! This film had so much potential but was flat, lacked emotion, and the music was disappointing. He took everything that was great about the Lion King out of this remake and we were just left with great cgi and not much else. And yet Guy Ritchie's Aladdin was fantastic!! Had everything a great Disney film should have, humour, great music that gives you goosebumps and makes you wan't to dance and had emotion. I left feeling disappointed and deflated, I had such high expectations for this film. There were even people on their phones half way through due to being bored. Waste of time and money

I REALLY wanted to like it. Yet, sometimes you just shouldn't mess with a good thing? This remake seems completely unnecessary. So much of the emotion from the original was completely missing. You couldn't connect with the characters - even though you should have been able to easily.

The movie is beautiful! And I do mean beautiful. That ends anything good I can say.

The visual experience of this movie is pretty breathtaking, mostly due to that bit of nostalgia that always wanted to see this brought to life. Some of the more cartoonish characters are cool and funny as well.

Outside of this, though, we have a watered down story with an overall forgetable narrative. It's a shame, the story here is honestly one of the best things disney has ever done. Critical characters could have done better, musical elements seemed to be dulled.

Really a big disapointment overall.