The Lion King LIVE Remake Movie Review

It is with great pleasure that I’m writing this movie review! Seriously, since, I believe, November of 2018 my siblings and I were planning this day; what theatre were we going to witness it in, the clothes we were going to where, etc. For some of you reading this, you know just how flippin’ important this day was. For me personally, I grew up watching Lion King….and Lion King 2….and Lion King ½; so as you can see I’m a huge fan and a lover of the Lion King.

That is why I took it upon myself to write a review for this movie; and below I will be giving my “likes” and “dislikes” of the entire movie. LAstly, I’ll be ending my review with a number rating of the overall movie.

Likes:

The Plot Twist

For the most part, we all know how the Lion King movie goes: Mufasa, King of Pride Rock, has a son named Simba, who is next in line for the throne. Musfasa’s evil brother, Scar, wants to be a ruler so he kills Musfasa and tricks Simba into leaving. Time passes, Simba comes back, battles Scar for his rightful spot as King of Pride Rock, wins, and walks in his father, Mufasa’s, footsteps. And as you know it’s stuff that happens in between, Simba finds friends, falls in love etc. The LIVE Remake decided to put a little spin on the story line, which was quite risky I must say being that the original movie was PERFECT, but the spin to it was just as good to watch.

So one part they made a spin on was including a reason as to why Scar and Musfasa had “beef” in the first place. That wedge in there relationship being Musfasa’s wife, Sarabi. Scar at the beginning of the movie made a comment about Sarabi which implied that he wanted her but unfortunately his brother, Musfa, took the girl. Even after Scar was pronounced king, in the movie, there was a showdown between the two because Sarabi wouldn’t take Scar’s offer to be his wife, or AKA Queen of Pride Rock.

Another twist that I liked was the way they changed Scar and the hyena’s relationship. As you may remember from the original movie, Scar had 3 hyena servants: Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed. The three had been following Scar and had considered him there leader. In the remake, they made it so that Scar found the hyenas and came to them for help. And the hyena’s had already had a leader, Shenzi who they answered to. After Musfa had saved Simba and Nala, Scar made his way there and convinced Shenzi that going along with his plan would insure that they would “never go hungry again” as he said. Little twist to the orginal movie such as I stated, was risky, but actually made it very enjoyable to watch.

Remixed Songs

Another risky thing the producers did was remix the songs of the movie a bit. Songs such as “Be Prepared” were drastically changed, while others such as “I Just Can’t Wait to be King”, “Circle of Life”, “Hakuna Matata” had just slight minor changes. Nevertheless, these changes didn’t affect my likeness of the movie!

Dislikes

Nala….Or Let me Just Say It: Beyonce

Yeah I said it; but BEEHIVE please don’t come for me (please!). Here’s the flat out honest truth: everybody knew that was Beyonce so one can say that a person just forgot that she was playing Nala. Seriously, you would of thought that Simba was falling in love with Beyonce. I feel as though that Beyonce is such a known and her voice is very distinctive that it was no long Beyonce playing Nala, Nala just turned into Beyonce (if that makes sense).

Not only that, but Beyonce, in my opinion, didn’t put enough “soul” into her acting. Don’t get me wrong, when she was singing “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” I felt that, but as we all know, Beyonce is a PHENOMENAL singer, so of course she was going to murder that song; but when it came to her acting it seemed as if she was just reading it off paper, which leads to my second point…

Lines had NO SOUL!!

So basically, I felt as if there was no “soul” or “heart” put into a lot of the actors. I mean, for this to be a Lion King Remake, one of the greatest childhood movies of all times, you would of thought that for these actors and actresses to be chosen out of everybody in the world to play these parts they would of put all there soul, and energy, and actually became one with the roles they were playing in. But sadly, I didn’t feel that at all. Like they were literally just reading the lines off a piece of paper. And no, I didn’t just feel this way about Beyonce, I felt this way about a lot of the roles. The one that hurt the most was Mufasa’s voice, played by the same person that was his voice in the original Lion King, James Earl Jones.

Parts of The Movie Seemed Rushed

I did feel like throughout the movie a lot of the scenes were rushed. For instance, Scar pushing Mufasa off the ledge to his death. In the original movie, Mufasa ask Scar for help on the ledge, Scar takes a second to look at him, then puts his claws in Mufasa’s paws and gets closer to him and whispers “Long live the King” and throws him off. Pretty dramatic right? In the remake, it just happened so quick, you didn’t even have a chance to feel you heart stops for a little bit or even to ask the question “What is he going to do next?” It’s like they didn’t build the suspense or anything they just BOOM let it happen.

Scenes such as Scar and Simba fighting, Simba walking onto Pride Rock to take his place as king was also sped up. Like they didn’t want to give you time to feel the actually moment of what was going on at the time.

Overall…

So on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the worst movie of the face of the planet, and 10 being a movie I can watch everyday because it’s just that great I would have to rate the “Lion King Remake” a 6. Yeah I said it, it wasn’t a terrible movie by no means, but at the same time this is the Lion King were talking about. It’s kind of heart to remake a movie that is already, well, to me, PERFECT!

But, the only way you’ll know how YOU feel about the movie is if you head on down to your local movie theatre, buy a ticket and watch it for yourself!