Michael's Movie Grade: C
A passable Disney prequel.
While far from a great movie, this film is a definite improvement over the 2019 Lion King. I am still not a fan of this type of very realistic animation being used in a film about talking animals. However, I will admit it is done better here. The animators allow for a bit more expression and cartoon-yness to slip in. Sometimes these facial expressions appearing on such realistic looking animals can be unintentionally funny and take you out of the movie. However, they keep this film from feeling as cold and emotionless as the 2019 movie.
The best part of this movie is the relationship between Mufasa and Taka. This relationship feels completely real and the way it alters over the course of the story is very believable. Because of this we really care about these characters and it pains us to know what will happen (this is a prequel so that is not a spoiler). The storyline is pretty standard and predictable (then again by their very nature prequels are predictable), but these two characters make it kind of work.
This movie does have some truly awful moments though. The humor is really bad here. Every comedic moment simply falls flat and many of them are even quite annoying (especially the ones with Timon and Pumba). The songs are also quite bad here. They are forgettable at best and toneless and annoying at worst. I enjoyed the songs Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote for Moana (2016). However, his recent Disney work (Encanto (2021) and The Little Mermaid (2023)) has fallen far short of his songs for that film. This is his weakest work on a Disney film yet.
This will never be considered a Disney classic, but it is a step up from many of their recent remakes.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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