How This Works – Read Other Reviews
Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 1994 film The Lion King.
Story
The story is an extremely simple retelling of Hamlet with a little less brooding. It’s iconic and still believable. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.
Score: 0.5
Characters
The characters are fun and have believable arcs. I find it extremely strange that Simba and Nala have separate voice and song actors. I have also always found Simba miscast at both ages.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
The dialogue is extremely clever and the one liners are part of any Disney fans vocabulary. There’s little dialogue in the movie that doesn’t have more than one meaning and that’s a lot of fun.
Score: 1
Visuals and Music
The movie is beautiful and the animation, especially right at the beginning, is spectacular.
I’ve seen the shows at Disney and heard parts of the Broadway play. Both are a little richer and cleaner. However, the music in this is wonderful. The opening song is one of my favourite opening sequences.
Score: 1
Fun
Older Disney movies are hard for me to judge the fun factor because they are so enmeshed with nostalgia. However, my kids were glued to the screen and my four year old gasped in all the right places.
Score: 1
Overall
Other than a few awkward jokes (and some miscasting in my opinion) the movie has aged extremely well and is worth watching just for the opening sequence. This is a movie that all ages will and have loved.
Final Score: 4 Stars out of 5