TheLionKing review: Jon Favreau’s exhilarating live-action take hews closer to the Walt Disney animated masterpiece than any of the studio’s recent remakes
” hews closer to the Walt Disney animated masterpiece than any of the studio’s recent remakes. Technically, “live action” is the wrong way to describe the movie — more a cover version, really — which is every bit as animated as the 1994 original, and leagues beyond Favreau’s 2016 “The Jungle Book” update in terms of how breathtakingly photorealistic the visual effects work is.
I have a theory that all 20th-century American kids go crazy for at least one Disney animated movie in their lives. They buy the toys; they buy the home video; they watch it so often, they have it memorized. Think back to your own childhood. Maybe it happened with “The Little Mermaid,” or if you’re older, with “Lady and the Tramp” or “Fantasia.
Even a quarter-century ago, audiences were savvy to the kind of representation problems that Hollywood creators are finally addressing today, and “The Lion King” rightly took flak for casting white actors in Disney’s first Africa-set animated movie .
Of all the cast, Ejiofor has the toughest job, reinventing the film’s second most iconic performance, Jeremy Irons’ conniving purr. His is the character who changes the most. Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson hardly deserves the sole credit he gets, considering the debt he owes to “The Lion King” writers Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton, although he does add a few key lines here and there to explain — and update — Scar’s motivations.
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