The Lion King

A beautiful visual aspect and Hans’s faultless, Oscar-winning composition. A remake of one of my favorite kids’ movies with a minimum of changes, which suits me just fine. More action scenes and a little more romping in the perfectly rendered countryside do nothing but good. I liked the voice of James Earl Jones and Seth Rogen is fantastic as Pumba. (11/09/2019)

A mechanically generated remake that looks beautiful and has a couple of ideas of its own, but that’s also something that nobody who didn’t expect to profit from it needed in this world. I haven’t watched the original since I was a kid and I don’t have many memories about it, that’s probably the reason why I was able to endure this version unharmed and don’t need to condemn it to a below-par rating. And of course, I praise the superb voice acting, among whom Seth Rogen as the faithful warthog stands out (only Jeremy Irons was missing). 60% (03/16/2020)

A verbatim remake that, while visually stunning, is an identical copy of the famous original without any additional ideas, improvements or moments of surprise (except for the dung beetle). Favreau thus remains just a hitmaker who can deliver a film that will hit the hundred-million mark at the box office, but the soul of the original is nowhere to be seen. Commercially, it’s fine, perhaps, but otherwise it’s a pointless update of something that was already almost perfect. (07/21/2019)

A new version of the classic Disney story about Simba, who grew from a little lion cub into the king of animals and avenged his father's death. The new Lion King looks incredibly realistic, but the moment the animals start talking and singing, it starts to fall apart. The fairytale atmosphere where no one bothered with the chatty animals is gone, and in its new form it all feels a bit out of place. Still, it's an inoffensive adventure that will appeal to older viewers with its nostalgia and younger ones with its songs and lots of animals. But it is far from an exceptional film. (07/23/2019)

Jon Favreau got probably excited about new animation technology because after beautiful The Jungle Book he filmed  no less amazing The Lion King. And even though the story is well known and you heard the music a hundred times, it is still brilliant and I was captivated by this remake. And it is precisely this technology that makes me feel as if real living creatures were wandering through that bush. I was even horrified a little by the thought I had while watching this movie that the kids in the future might watch this kind of movies and think what a wonderful world we used to have... (12/24/2019)