The Lion King-The Babysitter With a Hefty Price Tag
The success of some films are amazingly simple to explain. It is a sequel lots of people are dying to see for example, or in the case of the Lion King, it is a kids friendly, heavily promoted animated film with good animation. Essentially, this explains the incredible success of the film which pulled far above $700 million worldwide.
Like most animated films produced by Hollywood The Lion King is squarely aimed at children and like most Hollywood animated flicks, The Lion King is not as innocent as it seems. Usually animated films are full of messages that may seem simple, but you may not want your child exposed to. The Lion King is no exception for the film addresses one of Hollywood’s favorite topics, royalty. The film is all about royal linage and the ruling of a kingdom, only in this case the kingdom is in the wild and the royalty is a pride of cats. King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi have a son Simba. You see it is only natural to have royalty. Scar, King Mufasa’s brother wishes to be king and plots to overthrow him with a pack of hyenas. Anyone who doesn’t agree with royalty is a villain, a traitor and, well a evil hyena I guess. Oh to be sure Scar is a bum and he is a villain, on this point there is no doubt.
The script obviously borrows from just about everywhere ranging from Shakespeare to the Bible, and not surprisingly is fairly devoid of anything that might be mistaken for originality. The pacing is fine, but the characters are of course, ridiculously cliched cut-outs of the parts they are destined to play.
The Lion King manages to find other ways to be annoying, such as the voice “work” of Whoopie Goldberg and a bunch of songs from Elton John. Weird decisions all the way around. Often these big-budget animated films zero in on how great the rich and powerful are and The Lion King is only different in the fact that the humans have been swapped out for Lions and other animals.
Yes, the animation is good and most of the voice acting is solid, but we should all expect more out of the studios than these recycled ideas, notions and scripts. These films will babysit your children, but at price.
Story D- (The script is full of bad messages that are derivative to the extreme.)
Acting B-
Visuals A- (Great animation wasted on an offensive script.)
Originality/Innovation F
Enjoyability Grade D/C (The animation will keep adults entertained just enough to earn the D grade and children will likely think it is about average.)
Home Theater/HD Factor A
Overall Grade D-/C (Kids grade of a “C” as they will enjoy it but most adults will be a bit bored by the all to familiar story of “God Save the Queen” or in this case the King. Whatever, the visuals save the film from its silly, refried script. Laziness abounds.)
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