michaelbuday-65018

It's hard to explain just how bad this movie is. Let's start with a positive: I applaud the creators for attempting to use AI as a creative tool. Whether we like it or not, AI will increasingly help film makers with arduous tasks like rotoscoping, storyboarding, shot and sound fixes, etc. And in the right creative hands, the creation of images, scenes, characters, etc. In the wrong hands, you get a movie like this.

In the first ten minutes I thought the horrible writing, voice acting and pacing were intentional and would, in time, reveal a clever creative technique that pays off as the film progresses. That never happened. The film is badly executed on almost every level: writing, editing, sound mixing, flat and lifeless voice acting almost is if no one gave the "actors" any direction. The AI animation stutters, as if the frame rate is mismatched somewhere in the pipeline.

While some of the imagery is quite striking, beautiful, etc. It simply cannot compensate for the above mentioned flaws - there's just nothing to hang on to or care about, which is a shame.

Ugh. Here it is in a nutshell:

VFX: absolutely amazing, breathtaking.

STORY: a convoluted mess SCORE: unequivocally forgettable. There wasn't a single song you could take home with you. Just blah!!!

We took our grandchildren to see Mufasa and while they enjoyed it, they were eager for it to end. My wife and I kept looking at our watches, not a good sign.

Our eight year old said, "Too much story telling," and he was right. Every plot point was broadcast out loud for all to hear. As a prequel, you could feel the writers cogs spinning in their heads to make the puzzle pieces fit, and it was not good.

The only good thing I can say is the look of the film was stunning, the VFX virtually indistinguishable from real life - but in the end it didn't serve the film well at all. Making it so utterly lifelike disconnected me from the film - a little detachment from reality would have made this fantasy much more approachable.

So a huge miss by Disney IMO.

There are no words to express how truly horrible this documentary is. How Amazon allowed this dreck on its platform is mind boggling. The AI narrator is abominable - but overall execution smacks of someone who has no clue how to craft a narrative. And ridiculously hilarious stock footage choices only make things worse.

A word of advice to the "director," stop making films - it's not your thing. Using Tom Hank's name to get a film on Amazon is bad enough, but execute so poorly makes it even worse.

Tom Hanks should get his lawyers to get this crap off all streaming services. What an embarrassment.