Not a full review but just a few of my impressions about Disney’s remake of the Animated classic.

The technical achievements are mind blowing. It is not a live action movie but a photo-realistic CGI animated film and the photo-realism is spot on. There were very few moments, and those were fleeting, where I felt the computer’s presence but rather this looked, utterly, like a menagerie of African animals acting on the savanna. The lions’ fur during rain was particularly impressive.

The technical artistry was also the feature principal failing. As many reviewers have notes the animals’ feature are so faithfully reproduced that emotional expressiveness is absent. The angled od the head and movement of the ears are the most overt indicators of a character’s emotional state, more than any other animated feature this one relies heavily, too heavily, on the vocal performances. (Which were fine but the lack of emotional eyes damages the film.)

Why of why did they have to screw-up my favorite song?

I adore the original’s rendition of Be Prepared, and while I have never heard Chiwetel Ejiofor sing (One of these days I am going to have to rent Kinky Boots) the spoken and broken cadence of this version of my favorite song grated.

While I am on the subject of the villains, the revising of the plot to elevate the hyenas as more active while devaluing Scar’s agency did not work at all and muddled a perfectly balanced plot into one that while not a mess lacked a strong dramatic though line as in the original.

If you are a fan of the original this movie is not really worth the time.