| Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: July 19, 2019 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
20
Mixed:
29
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
Jul 11, 2019
By and large, very few remakes, other than Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot reproduction of Psycho, have adhered as closely to their original versions as this one does. Everything here is so safe and tame and carefully calculated as to seem pre-digested. There's nary a surprise in the whole two hours.
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Jul 11, 2019
Jul 11, 2019
While it’s a near shot-for-shot remake of the original, this version of The Lion King lacks much of the emotion and expressiveness that keeps people coming back to the first. ... Someone who’s never seen the original version could probably enjoy this strictly inferior clone. But why should they?
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Jul 11, 2019
Uncanny singing animals aside, a secondary effect of the film’s commitment to zoological verisimilitude is to place the voice actors in a relatively powerless position. It’s a strange choice to assemble an all-star cast from various walks of celebrity—actors, pop singers, rappers, comedians—and then make their only contribution a verbal one.
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Jul 11, 2019
It doesn’t help that the characters in some cases have been rendered with such realism that they have lost all human expression on their faces. Maybe that’s the idea — to not anthropomorphize them too much and to stay grounded in zoological authenticity. But they’re still talking, and singing, only now their faces are inexpressive; it’s a weird disconnect.
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Jul 11, 2019
The songs don’t have the pop or the splendor. The terror and wonder of the intra-pride battles are muted. There is a lot of professionalism but not much heart. It may be that the realism of the animals makes it hard to connect with them as characters, undermining the inspired anthropomorphism that has been the most enduring source of Disney magic.
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Jul 19, 2019
This is a universally powerful story, with terrific songs and countless funny and fascinating supporting characters. It’s a classic of performance and sensation. This version, seemingly by design—like that was the damned plan all along—drains every bit of life from it … in order to make it more “realistic.”
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Jul 17, 2019
This all-too-realistic animated feature will impoverish, rather than enrich, those who watch it by asking less rather than more of their imaginations. That’s because its images have been stripped of the animator’s true art — daring, bedazzling designs that can thrill us with their surreality, and lift our emotions to hyperreal heights.
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Jul 11, 2019
And while the new Lion King is slightly easier to take—maybe because these heavily CGI-enhanced “real” lions don’t have the same cartoon humanity of the earlier version’s animated ones—the picture still has a manufactured, preachy sheen. This is calculated virtuousness masquerading as imagination, though it’s easy to be sidetracked by how adorable the cub Simba is.
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