AVERAGE
SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
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SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Welcome to yet another unnecessary live(less) action remake of one of Disney's most distinguished animations - The Lion King.
Long story short, this is a shot-to-shot remake of the original movie with nothing new added in terms of plot, character or story. The visual effects are impeccable - coming from the director of 2016's The Jungle Book, this is not a surprise. Feast your eyes on every little fur and wrinkles these animals have and good luck figuring out where the computer generated layers are at. Also, Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is as wonderful as the colors are.
The lack of human emotions and facial reactions on these animals single-handedly massacred the film. Facial reactions stay the same for every feelings they are experiencing - you can't tell if they're happy, sad, angry or anything! It strips away all the emotions, effectiveness, impact, life and soul that pioneered the cartoon this copy is based on. As a result, what we end up seeing onscreen is a lifeless Animal Planet documentary. Heck, Animal Planet documentary has more life in it compared to this feature!
When the animals speak, their mouths just move mechanically. It's weirder when they start singing. The voice acting performances are humanlike - full of verbal emotional responses but when attached to the animal's dead facial reactions, they stand out like a sore thumb - not matching or syncing with the mechanical mouth movements. Notice how we are emphasizing the word 'animal' here, instead of 'characters'? Because at the end of the day, this version of The Lion King reduced our beloved original characters to mere regular realistic animals without any personality by just removing human emotions and facial reactions. This here, is the exact reason why we've mentioned time and time again that any attempt at transliterating / emulating an animated flick into the live action medium will fail regardless. You won't be able to capture the essence no matter how hard you try and 2019's The Lion King is the epitome of this mistake!
In all reality, this is a garbage retelling of an epic intellectual property. Skipping this one to binge-watch the 1994 masterpiece will do favors to your wallet, time, body, mind and soul.