I just got through watching a very negative review of this Disney classic. While I really loved it when I saw it as a kid. (I still know the words to all the songs), I found myself agreeing with what was said. But I still liked it
So, what did you think of it, and, if you liked it, how would you respond to the criticisms in the above link?
What link?
I saw it as an adult, and thought it was okay. I certainly thought it was good for kids…TRM
I was aware that the story had been wholesale lifted from an anime before going in, which certainly didn’t endear me to it, and then found it to be at the height of songs for no reason and amusing sidekicks and all the other Disney formulae that the story itself was largely irrelevant and the whole thing was the start of the mockery of all the serious (though child friendly) work that the Disney company had done up until that point. The Lion King was the beginning of the end for Disney animated films.
I mostly remember laughing my ass off when Simba told Uncle Scar (voiced by Jeremy Irons) that he was weird, and Scar tells him “You have no idea.”
I’d just seen Jeremy Irons give the same response to the same accusation in “Reversal of Fortune” a few years earlier, and thought that was pretty clever…TRM
When it came out, I was six, and let me tell ya, I was obsessed, OBSESSED with it.
I still think it holds up pretty well for a kid’s movie.
You actually sat through the whole review? Ye gods and little fishes. I’ve made it about 3 minutes in, or about 1/3 of the way through the first of three parts of this review–I can’t imagine sitting through half an hour of this guy. In the time he spends describing what happens in the movie, I could already watch a big chunk of the damn thing.
The only point he’s made up to the point I quit listening is that Simba is an awful, negative, unworthy character because “little kid Simba” has the temerity to act like a little kid. But that, to me, is an integral part of the narrative–if Simba hadn’t been acting in the thoughtless, impulsive, self-centered way of a small child, the whole thing with Scar killing his father wouldn’t have happened, or at least not in a way that Simba would have blamed himself for it. If he weren’t a little kid with a little kid’s reasoning and analytical faculties, he would have stayed and trusted that everyone would understand that it was merely a tragic accident rather than running away from home because everybody was going to be mad at him and nobody would like him anymore. And then you wouldn’t have had a story.
I saw it twice in the theater as a kid. It’s still one of the few movies I’ve seen more than once while it was still playing, but I haven’t seen it in over ten years so I don’t know how well it’s stood up.
Gotta agree–I listened to the first 3 minutes of part 2, and he’s essentially blaming Simba for…acting like a kid. None of his observations are very interesting or well-articulated, and his “arguments” (really just assumptions he doesn’t bother to defend) don’t really stand up very well. He also uses the term “gratuitous” for one of the songs (showing he completely misses the point of musicals in general). In the Comments section, this guy does a pretty good job of taking him down.
I’m no lover of TLK (not even close to my Top 10 of Disney animated features), but if you’re going to criticize it, it helps if you’ve actually been paying attention to the film and not let your own obvious prejudices color every scene.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I seem to recall it being too short. In particular, I thought they could have expanded a lot more on Simba growing up, rather than just literally crossing a bridge and being an adult.
The poll should have included a fine tune between “pretty bad” and “well done.” “Meh,” perhaps.
I went with Pretty Bad, but that’s overstating things. Still, the songs didn’t move me, the Kings of the Savannah notion was silly, the fart jokes unwelcome, the “Simba feels responsible” plot line unconvincing, the mysticism… the insectivore Simba… the meh.
“But don’t we eat the antelope?”
“Yes, but when we die, our bodies fertilize the grass that feeds the antelope…”
Or something like that. I think the lions get the better of that particular “circle.”
The hyenas were kinda cute.
For it’s ability to make my kids catatonic for the better part of an hour at a time, it was a fantastic movie. Why anyone older than 10 feels the need to watch it, or worse yet, sit down and write a review, I have no idea.
I don’t care what your feelings are on Lion King; that was a terrible review.
ArchiveGuy–good find, that guy does a great job of demonstrating how the reviewer let his apparent bias get in the way.
I couldn’t sit through much of it either. You might think The Lion King is the best or worst movie of all time, but either way, that’s the worst movie review I have ever seen, heard or read.
I think I might have a T-shirt around here somewhere that features a picture of Kimba walking past a Disneyesque mirror that is reflecting an image of Simba. It says ‘The Lyin’ King’. I think there’s also a caption that says something like ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, Who came first, after all?’
I would like to mention that I was 6 when The Lion King came out, which influenced my poll answer.
This guy seems to not know many little kids; if I was in Simba’s position and equivalent age, I would feel like Mufasa’s death was my fault, especially with another adult telling me it was so. I knew exactly how Simba felt when that happened, only my thing was that I got my brother hurt, not killed: I petted a calf that was being weighed on the tailgate on my aunt’s truck while my big brother and I sat in the bed. I told my brother to feel how soft the calf was, and then the momma cow noticed him, and knocked my brother so hard he ended up against the back window of the truck. I thought it was my fault for years even though adults told me it wasn’t- and that the cow in question was the meanest nastiest cow we owned and was only kept around because she had fantastic calves.
The grudge against Hakuna Matata is reasonable. Ditto the “walk across the bridge and boom he’s a grown-up!”
He overreacts about Rafiki “just showing up.” Rafiki presented the infant Simba to the world; just because he doesn’t have lines in the first act doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. Rafiki was obviously the court magician or shaman who was banished by Scar.
Rafiki! I keep wanting to call him Red-rumpy.
Yeah, blaming Simba for wanting his dad to wake up and show him the sunset is kind of like saying that because Liz was annoying and woke up at 6 am as a kid that she’s a shitty monarch. You can be a bad king/queen for a lot of reasons, but c’mon. Kids wake up at the ass crack of dawn and then because they’re little they wake their parents up. It may be irritating, but it’s hardly a character flaw.
I’ve seen bits and pieces on TV, but I have never seen the whole move. Nor really want to.
One of Disney’s weaker efforts in the post-Little Mermaid era. It was a real disappointment after The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, but pales behind Pocahontas, Hunchback, Hercules and Mulan. Too simplistic a plot with uninteresting characters and no real humor at all. Scar is one of Disney’s least interesting villains, and only the stampede scene is visually interesting.