| Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: July 19, 2019 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
20
Mixed:
29
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
Jul 11, 2019
There’s something about this Lion King, which, like the original, has its narrative roots in “Hamlet,” that feels so much more Shakespearean and — there’s no other word for it — so much more tragic than the 1994 feature-length animation, in which the story’s darker themes were subliminal, not center stage.
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The TelegraphJul 11, 2019
You might imagine that easy-breezy, Hakuna Matata-chanting middle act would only work when drawn by hand. Yet cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s expert command of "natural" spectacle and the sheer exuberance of Rogen and Eichner’s performances make it the film’s most purely delightful section.
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Jul 11, 2019
Favreau’s most important responsibility in overseeing the remake was simply not to mess it up. Which he doesn’t. Then again, nor does he bring the kind of visionary new take to the material that Julie Taymor added when staging the Broadway musical. That makes Favreau’s “The Lion King” an undeniably impressive, but incredibly safe entry to the catalog — one whose greatest accomplishment may not be technical (which is not to diminish the incredible work required to make talking animals look believable), but in perfecting the performances.
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RogerEbert.comJul 19, 2019
The worst thing you can say about this movie, and maybe the highest compliment you can pay to it, is to say that it would be even more dazzling if it told a different story with different animals but with the same technology, and in the same style — and perhaps without songs, because you don't necessarily need them when you have images that sing.
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Movie NationJul 11, 2019
“King Redux” has just a couple of more laughs than the first Disney cartoon, but being 30 minutes longer, that’s not much of a plus. The original vs. remake comparison is hard to get away from here, but I have to say I was moved just once by this remake — that lovely opening note of African song/chant still thrills.
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Jul 11, 2019
By and large, very few remakes, other than Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot reproduction of Psycho, have adhered as closely to their original versions as this one does. Everything here is so safe and tame and carefully calculated as to seem pre-digested. There's nary a surprise in the whole two hours.
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Jul 11, 2019
Jul 11, 2019
While it’s a near shot-for-shot remake of the original, this version of The Lion King lacks much of the emotion and expressiveness that keeps people coming back to the first. ... Someone who’s never seen the original version could probably enjoy this strictly inferior clone. But why should they?
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Jul 11, 2019
Uncanny singing animals aside, a secondary effect of the film’s commitment to zoological verisimilitude is to place the voice actors in a relatively powerless position. It’s a strange choice to assemble an all-star cast from various walks of celebrity—actors, pop singers, rappers, comedians—and then make their only contribution a verbal one.
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Jul 11, 2019
It doesn’t help that the characters in some cases have been rendered with such realism that they have lost all human expression on their faces. Maybe that’s the idea — to not anthropomorphize them too much and to stay grounded in zoological authenticity. But they’re still talking, and singing, only now their faces are inexpressive; it’s a weird disconnect.
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Jul 11, 2019
The songs don’t have the pop or the splendor. The terror and wonder of the intra-pride battles are muted. There is a lot of professionalism but not much heart. It may be that the realism of the animals makes it hard to connect with them as characters, undermining the inspired anthropomorphism that has been the most enduring source of Disney magic.
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Jul 19, 2019
This is a universally powerful story, with terrific songs and countless funny and fascinating supporting characters. It’s a classic of performance and sensation. This version, seemingly by design—like that was the damned plan all along—drains every bit of life from it … in order to make it more “realistic.”
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Jul 17, 2019
This all-too-realistic animated feature will impoverish, rather than enrich, those who watch it by asking less rather than more of their imaginations. That’s because its images have been stripped of the animator’s true art — daring, bedazzling designs that can thrill us with their surreality, and lift our emotions to hyperreal heights.
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Jul 11, 2019
And while the new Lion King is slightly easier to take—maybe because these heavily CGI-enhanced “real” lions don’t have the same cartoon humanity of the earlier version’s animated ones—the picture still has a manufactured, preachy sheen. This is calculated virtuousness masquerading as imagination, though it’s easy to be sidetracked by how adorable the cub Simba is.
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Jul 11, 2019
Ultimately, only Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, as slacker sidekicks Timon and Pumbaa, make much of an impression; their funny, possibly ad-libbed banter feels both fresh and true to the spirit of the characters—the perfect remake recipe. Just don’t look too hard at their character designs. They’re realistic, hideously.
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