EATEN BY LIONS (12)
★★★★★Roger Allers and Rob WENTY-FIVE years ago, The Lion King was the cat’s whiskers. Minkoff’s heartbreaking rites-of-passage drama roared at the Academy Awards, collecting golden statuettes for Hans Zimmer’s score and Elton John and Tim Rice’s swooning ballad Can You Feel The Love Tonight?
The highest-grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time continues to purr as a long-running stage musical.
Now, director Jon Favreau employs the same photorealistic computer wizardry, which served him well for his rollicking reimagining of The Jungle Book, to transport us to the sun-baked savanna for a virtually word-for-word remake, which trades heavily on technical excellence to justify its existence.
Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson appropriates most of the original dialogue and tempers the animated film’s more extravagant flourishes.
Consequently, scheming uncle Scar is no longer a scene-stealing pantomime villain, his Machiavellian call to arms Be Prepared loses the goose-stepping hyenas and provocative Nazi imagery, and the Busby Berkeley-style fantasia of I Just Can’t Wait To Be King is now a scamper around a watering hole.
Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen riff to hilarious effect as meerkat Timon and flatulent warthog Pumbaa, tucking into a banquet of bugs with gusto (“That’s what I call umami!”) and cheekily referencing another Disney classic when they are asked to cause a distraction.
As before, Mufasa (voiced by James Earl Jones) and mate Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) maintain a delicate balance between various animal factions.
Their proud leonine bloodline continues with the
Tbirth of Simba (JD McCrary), who is introduced to the world by shamanic mandrill Rafiki (John Kani) atop Pride Rock.
Mufasa’s embittered brother Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) plots to seize control of the grasslands by forging a fragile alliance with the hyenas.
The despicable plotters lure Simba into a canyon during a stampede and Mufasa dies saving his boy from being
crushed under clattering hooves. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Simba flees and the tearful cub is befriended by carefree duo Timon (Eichner) and Pumbaa (Rogen), who are eager to share their “problem-free philosophy”. Meanwhile, Scar’s tyrannical reign reduces the lush pride lands to a barren sprawl of rotting carcasses where Simba’s (now voiced by Donald Glover) sweetheart Nala (Beyonce Knowles) feels powerless to oppose despotic rule.
There is no denying that The Lion King is a mighty handsome and muscular beast.
Close-ups of Simba’s baby blue eyes shamelessly pluck heartstrings and the attention to detail on the animals’ fur is jaw-dropping.
Aside from Eichner and Rogen’s ad-libs, every word and emotional crescendo is secondhand, beginning with a soaring cry of “Nants Ingonyama” from Circle Of Life as a sun rises over the animals’ domain. ★★★★★
BITTERSWEET, multicultural buddy comedy. Half-brothers Omar (Antonio Aakeel) and Pete (Jack Carroll) are orphaned at a young age when their parents’ romantic hot air balloon getaway crash-lands in the lion enclosure of a safari park. The boys’ wind up in the questionable care of their aunt Ellen (Vicki Pepperdine) and her husband Ken (Kevin Eldon). They propose adopting Pete but not Omar because, in Ellen’s words, “You’re not our side.” Omar sets out to find his biological father, with Pete in tow, leading to bumbling man-child Irfan (Asim Chaudhry) who runs the first Pakistani and Indian gift shop in Blackpool. ■ Download/stream from July 22 and available on DVD/Blu-ray from July 29.