Hiring Barry Jenkins to direct a spin-off of “The Lion King” comes off as a joke you’d make after “Moonlight” won the Oscar for Best Picture, less at the expense of the filmmaker than an industry that has become cautious. of investment in its kind. motivated talent. In the ’90s, Hollywood might have passed him his checkbook. This decade, however, simply getting the green light for a big movie requires a catfight. “Mufasa: The Lion King,” from a screenplay by Jeff Nathanson, has taken up a significant portion of Jenkins’ bandwidth; It was first announced in 2020. You’re flipping through the movie looking to place it in itArray, but there’s not much else to it. than an airy intermission in which 3 lions flirt in the grass.
This is a guaranteed blockbuster that no one wants, neither studio accountants nor parents. I’ll settle for it in those situations because it’s a smart thing for a kid who is popular with young people to get them into the habit of going to the movies. Yes, it is easy and obligatory to make fun of Disney for exploiting every last drop of a franchise. Hell, Disney has even learned that it can be lucrative to laugh at itself, which happens here when an animal complains, “Please don’t mention the play again. ” “And now, society’s zeal for prequels has resulted in a movie about two kittens we all watched suffer a gruesome death. To my morbid delight, “Mufasa” begins by killing one of them again.
The plot is that Simba and Nala (Donald Glover and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter) have entrusted their little daughter, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), to 3 well-known babysitters: Pumba the wild boar (Seth Rogen), Timon the meerkat (Billy Eichner) . and Rafiki, the psychic baboon (John Kani), who insists he is not a baboon. Rafiki tells the origin story of Kiara’s grandfather while, in a cadence that sounds like a nervous executive’s pacemaker, Pumbaa and Timon interrupt for atonal comic relief: “Less trauma from the formative years! No more meerkats. ” Timon groaned.
Most of the time, we travel around Tanzania with a little orphan named Mufasa (voiced in his youth through Braelyn and Brielle Rankins, and in his prime through Aaron Pierre) and his brother Taka (Theo Somolu and later Kelvin Harrison Jr. ) who comes from a royal lineage. My challenge with the original “Lion King” and its 2019 remake is that Simba is a one-note brat. Mufasa is even worse (surely he is the best) and the other characters still can’t help but comment on him. “You’re the lion who can do anything,” a woman (Tiffany Boone) purrs warmly. This is not an exaggeration. Among his innate gifts, Mufasa proves to be an expert in elephant migration patterns and botany.
To further the hagiography, the script flubs its own plot points. Early on, there’s a fight where, apparently, Mufasa murders an unnamed lion. Except you wouldn’t know that happened from anything onscreen until a follow-up beat where the dead lion’s father, Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), learns that his child died of his injuries at some point between scenes. Kiros’ quest for vengeance is a through-line of the film, and the kill is Mufasa’s first blood (though it won’t be his last). Yet the moral impact doesn’t seem to occur to our noble hero at all.
Line readings are stuck off guard. Mufasa and most of the other lions look like animatronics from a theme park with voices set to “Calm”. To increase homogeneity, the main characters – and here I am referring to more than a dozen animals – tell the same story: they miss their family. The duploady/mom/sibling issues are so repetitive that it’s a relief when Zazu (Preston Nyman), the hornbill, never mentions a long-lost egg.
Taka, the cowardly lion, will receive a call that will surprise no one. The biggest challenge is: why didn’t this movie appear as “Scar”? This kind-hearted prince is the only compelling character. From his point of view, Taka can legitimately argue that a golden god like Mufasa is infuriating: this vagabond has literally destroyed his pride. Additionally, Taka’s voice actors Somolu and Harrison Jr. deliver dynamic performances with mercurial sentiments and cockney charm. accent. During the song “I Always Wanted a Brother”, the photorealistic lion sings his “bruvaah” with the surreal enthusiasm of Growltiger in “Cats”.
The most subtle animation is the best, especially when sunlight stains the fur or the felines flex their claws to assert their power. (I write this while suffering from keeping a 20-pound Maine Coon out of my office. ) Chances are for dreamlike images: a flock of birds flying like fighter jets, a herd of antelope emerging from the haze of a horror movie, and an unforeseen amount of beautiful and terrifying swimming sequences in which the so-called kings of the jungle are continually defeated by gravity and water. At times, the look becomes gonzo for the audience watching the film in 3D. Think of a slow-motion raindrop running towards your face or images of pets running as if they have a GoPro camera on their collar.
The ending feels similarly rushed, although there’s nothing in particular I’d rather spend more time with than the songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The cast belts them at a terrific, breathless, breakneck pace, scaling octaves as demanded. There are only a few numbers, but most of them are marvelous constructions with sinewy arrangements and overlapping harmonies that tangle around each other during duets. Good luck pulling them off at karaoke. But it’s hard to call any one song a showstopper. They aren’t built for bombast, and none are as in-the-moment earwormy as “Hakuna Matata,” although there’s a slithery villain’s ditty by Mads Mikkelsen that became my favorite once I came around to the lyrics: “Cause I’m gonna be / the last thing you see / before you go / bye-bye.” I still think this prequel didn’t need to exist, but at least I left humming.
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