dusty film corner
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Lion King 1 ½ Directed by Bradley
Raymond Featuring Nathan
Lane, Jerry Stiller, Matthew Broderick |
So
once again Disney cashes in on an older title, just like they’re about to
do with the re-release of Aladdin and Lion King 2 (how many
damn times do they need to release these movies?!). Anyway, this is a sort of re-telling of the
story from the first Lion King flick, with a few notable
differences, which make it all the more irritating.
To
their credit, they managed to bring back most of the original voice actors from
the first movie, including Nathan Lane, chewing the scenery more than ever, and
Jerry Stiller making a slightly toned-down appearance as Timon’s uncle
Max. But ultimately, who cares? The whole movie isn’t so much a
complete story; it’s more like a series of short vignettes, with way too
many of those sequences where they play a song while the characters go through
various adventures in the background.
But we’ll get to the music later.
This “version” of the movie revolves around Timon and Pumba
instead of Simba, showing how they met, became friends, met Simba, blah blah
blah. Most of this movie is actually new
footage, with just a few sequences from the original. There is a very loose plotline involving
Timon searching for his “place” in life, leaving home, and so on,
but it utterly fails to draw the various pieces together. All of the basic storytelling elements
(conflict, resolution, ending, etc) are simply not here. It’s like they culled together a bunch
of shorts that they had written for these characters, threw them all in this
movie, and figured they’d worry about a plot later.
The
“movie”, if you can even call it that, clocks in at just barely
over an hour. Disney movies of the past
few years seem to show a trend for the increasingly short running times, and
trust me, it doesn’t make this one any more tolerable. Despite the short length, the score is
f*@king non-stop. There were some new
songs written for this movie, and in between “new” ideas they rip
off several other movies, none to
good effect. To call the music “disappointing”
would still be a compliment.
I
will say, in the movie’s defense, that my seven-year-old daughter enjoyed
it. And I’m not all that stodgy
either; Monsters, Inc. is one of my favorite movies of all
time, and I never get tired of watching The Emperor’s New Groove. But this movie, I could have definitely done
without. Adults, if you have the option
of leaving the room, do so...let your kids enjoy it in peace. As for Disney, damn them...damn them all to
hell. Pixar couldn’t have left
them soon enough.
(reviewed
by Mark)
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