After much procrastination, I finally took my ass out of the house to watch The Lion King, the movie everyone and their mama hyped the shit out of. I went in somewhat excited, but also somewhat hesitant. It starts off much like the film we grew up with as kids, but as I watched, I soon realized the problem with all of these Disney remakes. This is probably the laziest fucking movie I’ve ever watched. You’re probably wondering what could possibly be wrong with this, or ANY of these remakes?

Simply put, this movie is a soulless cash grab that is nothing more than a shell of an original timeless classic.

Now, I know what you’re thinking; “But the CG looks so awesome, and realistic. It’s like my favorite movie came to life.”

My problem is that the movie looks too real! It was as if someone took a nature documentary, spliced the footage up and added star studded voice overs who struggled to escape themselves long enough to make the characters I grew up with as believable as they were 25 years ago. Zazu felt more like I was listening to a comedy bit where John Oliver was turned into a bird. There’s something about Beyoncé’s voice outside of singing that bothers me.

I think what bothered me the most was that the animals lacked any form of facial expression. It was just a bunch of CG animals that accompanied voice clips. Imagine if you got a bunch of people with perpetual resting bitch face, and put them in a movie; you’d have a remake that does nothing spectacular to enhance the original in any way. The death of Mufasa doesn’t hit as hard because of the lack of facial expression.

Some other gripes:

1. Y’all took out “Be Prepared” and left me at blue balls with a tease of “I’m Almost Going to Sing Your Favorite Song.”

2. You have “Can You Feel The Love Tonight,” but totally take out the part where they tumble down the hill, Simba pins her, and Nala gives him the Ohh! face” (a sex reference you’ll only appreciate if you watched “Office Space”). What’s wrong? Are we all of a sudden afraid to throw sexually suggestive themes/references in kids movies? As if we don’t throw sex into kids faces 24/7. What’s the harm of Nala giving Simba the face that screams My body is calling to you.

3. Was it so hard to keep classic one liners like these “Make mine a cub sandwich?”

“Did we order our dinner to go?”

“No.”

“Cause there it goes!”

4. You trim parts of the movie that were longer in the original, all to make room for a new Beyoncé song which I’m certain will be an easy Oscar nomination.

This wasn’t a bad movie, just a really lazy one. Disney has all of this money at their disposal, yet they seem to forget that 2D hand drawn animation is their pedigree. The really didn’t need to remake this movie because the original is timeless. If this laziness is going to be indicative of whatever other remakes Disney has in store, then I don’t want anymore of this shit. This is simply a shameless cash grab, and I gave them my damn money. It was only $6 (yay cheap AMC Tuesdays), but it’s the principle of the matter.

I would rather Disney use this energy to make brand new IPs. Their movies from my childhood are good just as they are, and they can hold their own in 2019. Disney can do better than this, and they have the money to do better.

6/10

Stay classy…

 

Flemmings Beaubrun is an avid gamer and lover of music. When not working, Flemmings likes to spend his time whipping up dank beats for the masses. He also spends his weekends thrift shopping for rare video games and obscure electronics. Other times he’s in front of a TV with a giant bowl of cereal enjoying shows from the 90s.