Lion King 1 1/2 rocks!

Cafe Society
1

Just watched Lion King 1 1/2 with my kids.
Sometimes I’ll buy these straight-to-video sequels if they look interesting, but have been pretty much disappointed with most of them. The storylines, or the animation, or the music, or the voices, or all of them together suck in some way.

So I was mildly interested in Lion King 1 1/2 as my 5 yr old wanted to see it, but expectations remained low.

However, it absolutely rocks! Screw Lion King II: Simba’s Pride! That was a piece of crap!

LK 1 1/2 has it all: excellent animation, original cast voices, great mix of adult/kid jokes, kick-ass storyline and funny as hell, and great music!

I almost wish they released it into theaters.
No, compared to the last 4 or 5 Disney animated flicks, I DO wish they had released it in theaters!

2

So it’s NOT 90 minutes of nothing but Puumba flatulence jokes as every ad I’ve seen for it has implied?

3

Cool… just bought LK1.5 tonight for my daughter (it’s her 9th birthday), and we’re about to watch it. I hope I like it as much…

4

I’ve been wanting to see this a lot. Makes me wish my sister was still 8 so Disney movies always found their way into our house…

5

Eh, get it anyway. I’m 30 and my daughter’s only 6 months (far too young to comprehend the intricacies of the plot :slight_smile: ) but I can’t wait for the mailman to deliver the DVD to my doorstep.

6

Y’know, I still can’t help but see it as a shameless ploy by Disney to make a few million more dollars.

I loved the original Lion King. Ran out and bought the 2nd one on tape, and it was horrible.

If this gets good reviews on IMDB in the next few months, maybe I’ll buy it. But I don’t trust straight-to-video sequels for cartoons. I mean, look at “Land Before Time” 2-10 (I can’t believe they’ve made 10 of those, and the original was so good)…

7

Y’know, I agree with that last bit completely. In most cases (and this includes Disney), straight-to-video sequels suck rocks. The list of Disney sequels I’ve had to suffer through is long – Little Mermaid 2, Pocahontas 2, Lady and the Tramp 2, Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 (ugh!), and yes, even The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride – these and many more are examples of why the straight-to-video sequel should be avoided as much as possible.

Usually.

The Lion King 1 and 1/2 is the exception to the rule, however. It’s a sequel with much of the heart of its predecessor, and a good helping of originality as well. It manages to make lighthearted fun of the original film while remaining true to the spirit of it, something I wasn’t sure could be done. It’s not a parody, exactly, but it does manage to take some of the very serious, dramatic scenes from the original and put a funny spin on them. For example, want to know why all the animals started bowing to baby Simba on Pride Rock at the beginning of Lion King? You get to find out here… when I saw this part, I was rolling on the floor.

I was a little worried at the beginning of LK 1.5, when there were a couple of original songs which seemed like cheap knockoffs, and the story had a hard time finding its legs. However, once we got through this part (basically, once Timon leaves his meerkat home), the movie really starts to pick up. The “good part” of the movie really starts about one-third of the way in, and once it starts it doesn’t stop.

The animation is better than most of the Disney straight-to-video sequels, though not quite on a par with the theatrical-release movies. Still, the animation quality is better than expected, and it was a nice touch to have all of the voice talent from the original Lion King reprising their roles for this film.

Sure, there’s a couple fart jokes and other examples of fairly juvenile humor. But, what do you expect, it’s a movie intended for kids. My daughters all loved it, and frankly, many of these jokes were done so well that they had me laughing too.

To put it bluntly, I’d have to say that Lion King 1 1/2 is the flat-out funniest movie Disney’s put out since The Emperor’s New Groove, which is one of my favorites in the recent Disney catalog. I expected the movie to try for lots of humor, but what I didn’t expect were many of the clever and funny twists on the story of Lion King.

What came through loud and clear was that the makers of this film clearly loved the original Lion King as much as I did, and showed it by making a new movie which pokes well-intentioned fun at the original, even as it pays a faithful homage to it. In my opinion, nicely done and well worth seeing, and even owning.

Color me very pleasantly surprised this evening.

8

If all the good vibe is actually the case with LK1.5, then Eisner proves once again that he runs a hack shop as far as promotion goes. My beef was never with the idea of flatulence jokes (I mean, c’mon…Puumba’s in this movie! Flatulence jokes are a given.), but that the ads all seem to revolve around Puumba’s pooters. I’ve seen three television commercials for this movie and every one was a Puumba gas joke. It didn’t bode well, ya know?

9

So… What is it? A parallel re-telling of the events of the first one? Filling in Simba’s growing up? My biggest complaint about the first one was that it was too short… If this one fills in on the first one, it might be pretty good.

The first I even heard of this was when I saw the video for sale while grocery shopping today. But I knew that the Dopers could give me the scoop on it.

10

I haven’t seen it yet, but according to the articles I’ve read, it fills in the time Simba spent “in exile” with Timon and Pumbaa. In the original film, it was implied that he probably spent a few years with them but all the audience saw was a time-lapse of Simba growing from a cub into a king.

I’m glad it sounds better than I had feared. Some of the commercials I’ve seen recently appear to be nothing more than scenes from the original redubbed or with new animation applied to the foreground.

I’d call Michael Eisner Satan, but that would be giving him too much credit.

11

Who plays young Simba? Does he sound like the original Jonathan Taylor Thomas?

12

That would be a bad thing?

13

It’s a bit of both, really… about a third of the way in, The Lion King 1 1/2 picks up where The Lion King began, and starts “filling in” several gaps in the original story. The first part of the film is basically why Timon leaves his home and how he meets Pumbaa (this is the weakest part of the film, in my opinion). The rest basically parallels the original film, crossing over with it at a few key points. It does fill in some of Simba growing up, and tells the rest of the story from Timon and Pumbaa’s perspective. It works surprisingly well.

GuanoLad, looks like young Simba was voiced by Shaun Flemming in this one. He only had a few lines, but I couldn’t really tell the difference between him and JTT. Matthew Broderick did the older Simba voice again, and oddly enough I did notice a slight difference there, but not a bad one. I could just hear that he’d aged a bit.

14

I just read a comment in the IMDB listing for Lion King 1 1/2 comparing it to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which is a comparison I hadn’t thought of, but it’s quite apt. While LK1.5 isn’t quite as clever as R&GAD, it’s a very similar concept: telling a well-known story from supporting characters’ perspective. Think of that play, and you’ll have some idea of what this movie is like… with more fart jokes.

15

Is it anything like the Disney equivelent of R&G are dead? The Lion King is loosly Hamlet in the first place, even though Pumba and Timon don’t meet such a sucky fate.

On preview… Well crap, guess my observation isn’t so original. :wink:

16

It seems to me that, after all those sequels, it isn’t the Land Before Time anymore … it’s the Land After Time!

17

For young relative related reasons, I’ve had the misfortune of having to watch several of these sequels. By the third or fourth one, you start secretly rooting for a meteorite to crash down and make everyone extinct.