Le Roi Lion

Les animateurs ont fait un excellent travail en ce qui concerne l'authenticité de la représentation des animaux vivants et de la nature, de sorte que l'animation est absolument captivante et de nombreuses séquences ressemblent à celles d'un documentaire animalier. Le problème est que Le Roi Lion n'est pas un documentaire sur la savane africaine, mais une comédie musicale de Disney dans laquelle les animaux parlent et chantent, ce qui ne s'accorde pas vraiment avec l'animation photo-réaliste. De plus, afin d'atteindre un maximum de crédibilité, toute expression « humaine » a été retirée des héros animaliers, ce qui fait que seule la voix de leurs doubleurs porte les émotions dans leurs dialogues, mais cela ne suffit pas sans le support de visages d'animaux. L'histoire (essentiellement « Hamlet ») ne diffère en rien de la version animée (elle est simplement plus longue d'une demi-heure) et reste évidemment géniale, juste qu'elle n'a pas grand-chose de surprenant si vous avez déjà vu Le Roi Lion original. Le nouveau Roi Lion est donc seulement une copie technologiquement parfaite, mais sinon un peu dénuée d'âme par rapport à son prédécesseur bien meilleur. (03/10/2020)

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. (23/07/2019)

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... (24/12/2019)

The essence of sterility. Beautiful yet pointless. I wonder what Favreau's role as director was. It couldn't have been more than sending out two mass emails: one to the actors "put on The Lion King and say the same thing", and the other to the thousands of hopefuls behind the rendering computers "put on The Lion King, forget the emotions in the faces and otherwise do the same thing using CGI and share the result with me in a few years". There is not a single ounce of invention, no interpretation, let alone an original idea. On the other hand, the glitz is so intoxicating and the original material and music so catchy that if you have to take your kids to see it, at least it won’t a complete waste of time. (02/08/2019)

I felt as uncomfortable watching the new Lion King as I would have felt watching natural history documentaries with narration that jokingly imitates the “voices” of animals. At the same time, it is an inordinately long (and drawn-out) film, very dark (the hyenas could sign up for a horror-movie casting call) and verbose, i.e. not very suitable for younger viewers who would most likely appreciate the talking fauna. I very much enjoyed Caleb Deschanel’s camera work, which was adapted to the characters’ point of view, and one wordless scene including the odyssey of a dung beetle with a ball of giraffe droppings. Otherwise, a negative feeling of inappropriateness predominated. When you see a photo-realistically animated (and talking) warthog and a (talking) meerkat tame a (talking) lion cub and turn it into an entomophage, it is more disturbing than funny or cute. Whereas I can still be impressed by the original to this day, the reboot just makes me want to cry over the idea that it will be a huge commercial hit and Disney will continue to churn out such empty, asexual, absolutely unsurprising remakes of its successful films. The Jungle Book had a faster pace and more convincing characters, and it did not merely copy the original film, but developed it in a meaningful manner. It was unique in some way. Conversely, The Lion King is only a soulless imitation, perhaps technologically perfect, but almost worthless artistically. 50% (18/07/2019)