Directed by Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff. Voices of Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Whoopi Goldberg, Moira Kelly, Nathan Lane, Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Cheech Marin G cert, general release, 89 min
YOU CAN count on Disney to do these things properly. Whether “these things” are worth doing at all is another matter.
Despite being translated into 3D a full 17 years after it was first released, the new version of the The Lion Kingdoes not come across like a retro-fitted Clash of the Titans. The opening sequence, depicting birds flying across the African savannah, has impressive depth and the occasional lunging creature – who knew so much happened in the foreground? – fairly makes the viewer rock back in his seat.
Then, as usual, within five minutes or so, one’s eyes adjust and the third dimension becomes a total irrelevance. So much effort for so little return.
Still, the rerelease has stunned observers by becoming a genuine smash in the US. Actual new movies have cowered before The Lion King'sundiminished pulling power. Given how many 3D pictures have failed in recent months, this can only be a tribute to the original's unenhanced charms.
Nowhere near as innovative as Beauty and the Beast, somewhat less funny than Aladdin, The Lion Kingworks as a compendium of Disney's contemporaneous pre-Pixar tropes. Taking its narrative beats from Hamlet, the film includes the usual helium-voiced infant beast, the expected disrespectful sidekicks, and the traditional hymns to order and conformity.
All these traditions were in place by the early 1950s, but the New Age, quasi-mystical philosophising – all that Dylan Thomas stuff about the circle of life – is very much a phenomenon of the Clinton era.
Are we sneering? Not really. Featuring cracking songs and lovely backgrounds, The Lion Kingsaw a great Hollywood institution reasserting its power after a period in the near-wilderness. As ever,
the hero is more than a bit self-righteous and the villain is the only creature worth cheering for. See it for Scar.
DONALD CLARKE
