Conference bookie::movies

Well...I saw it opening night and loved it.

Minuses:  The movie is very predictable - no surprises at all, and there
          were a few holes in the story.

Pluses:   Awesome animation & great music put together as only Disney
          can.  Jeremy Irons as the evil Scar is perfect, as is 
          James Earl Jones as Mufasa (sp?).  A good dose of humor 
	  sprinkled is an added bonus.

I can't give it an object rating...I'm a Disney animated feature fanatic.
The first five minutes was worth the price of admission for me. :-)

--Chris
          

I haven't seen anything but the promotion yet, but
am looking forward to it.  Using the greatest
line from "Reversal of Fortune" ("You have no idea.")
in the mouth of Scar is really cute.  

    I'm not usually a Disney-basher.  Really.  But I guess I want
    all of Disney's animation to be as carefully wrought and realistic as
    "Snow White" was; I want the animal production numbers to require only
    a comfortable level in the suspension-of-disbelief area (I'm thinking
    of the mice and birds finishing Cinderella's dress, or the
    housecleaning scene in "Snow White").  We liked "The Lion King" BUT for
    me there were lots and lots of little irritations.  Disney can do MUCH
    better, IMO; I think they rushed this one out the door, and I think
    in some scenes they had rookies assigned to the background.
    
    So... I entered the following note in the PARENTING conference, where
    there was great anxiety over the possible violence level in TLK:
    
                         -< I say ages 6 and up >-
    
      Alex (9) and I saw it Saturday night.  While it wasn't as violent as
      the blurb from the Globe had made it seem, I still wouldn't take a
      child under 6 to see it.
    
      I prepared Alex first, telling her that I knew for a fact that the
      father lion dies in full sight of his cub, who then gets a guilt-trip
      laid on him by the evil uncle.  I said, "it's sadder than `Bambi',
      and you know how *I* get with `Bambi'!!" just to give her a point of
      reference.  She was fine with the scene; *I* was fine with the scene
      but I think Disney milked it for all the hankies they could, and *I* 
      think they went overboard.
    
      Music schmusic--"Circle of Life" is the only contender for any sort
      of accolades, and I would be disappointed if it won any awards.  Love
      the concept, lukewarm about its execution by Elton John and Tim Rice.
      The rest of the score I found mediocre, exacerbated by ridiculous
      revolving towers of animals trilling their brains out in unlikely
      settings (lava and vertically-shifting rocks in Africa?!).
    
      A few funny characters (but funnier to the adults than the kids,
      IMO); very predictable plot.  Uneven treatment on the background art.
    
    I don't care for (what I call) the "Ren & Stimpy School of Exaggerated
    Animation", and there's plenty of it here.  On the other hand, there
    are some wonderful cavorting-cub scenes which show that the animators'
    field work in Africa paid off.
    
    Semi-spoiler comments:
    I have to say that the stampede (computer-aided animation) was
    excellent, though I did wonder how the herd could be *running* down
    the cliff; it looked too steep for them to have a foothold. 
    
    Alex says "the best part is probably at the end when Simba finds his
    land and it's all sort of bad and despicable, and then as he's on the
    rock it turns into a better place.
    
    "And the cheapest [she means anachronistic] part is when Simba's teacher
    (the baboon) didn't even see the coyote behind him and made a karate move 
    to hit him.
    
    "The funniest part is with the hyenas when they ask Ed [the dim-bulb
    hyena] stuff, and when they're laughing, and when they said to Mufasa 
    `Oh I didn't know he was your kid; did you, Ed?' and Ed says `Yeah
    I knew I knew!'"
    
    FWIW,
    Leslie
    
    

We (my wife, daughter almost 9, son almost 6, and myself) went to see this
movie on Saturday.  My kids loved it, and are already asking when the video
will be out so we can buy it.

My wife and I liked it very much, but IMHO it is not as good as some of the
others in recent memory (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc).

Pluses:

1) The animation (especially the backgrounds) was stunning.  Most of the 
   animals seemed to be very true to life (Simba bouncing around as a cub,
   the elephants walking, etc).  The details were there, and I thought the
   level of animation was easily up to Disney standards.  And I am not just
   referring to the movies above: I think those movies and this one stand
   on a par with some of the classic Disney animations, like Lady and the
   Tramp (the scene where Mrs Darling is rocking the baby cradle, and her
   dress is swaying, the curtains are moving, the bow on the cradle is
   swaying slightly behind the rocking of the cradle, etc: *INCREDIBLE*).

2) The story worked for us.  It was a little sparse in a few spots, but
   they only had 100 minutes or so, so I didn't have a problem with that.

3) The preachiness which I expected (Circle of Life etc) was not that bad.
   One reviewer ripped Mufasa's speech to Simba about eating antelopes as
   "the rationalizations of a carnivore".  OK, but what's your point: Mufasa
   *is* a carnivore!  My feeling is that saying anything less than this
   would be to "Disneyize" the facts of nature to the point of ridiculousness,
   and not show kids that Mufasa and Simba do kill to live.


Minuses:

1) The songs were forgettable and mediocre.  I am a big fan of both Elton
   John and Tim Rice, but these songs did absolutely nothing for me.  I
   walked out of the last few Disney animations (see above) humming many
   of the songs (Under the Sea, the villians song from Beauty and the Beast,
   and several of the songs from Aladdin), but there was nothing here.

2) Some of the character movements were *very* poorly matched to the 
   backgrounds.  Look at the scene where Simba is growing up with the
   wart-hog, as they are walking along the log.  Their feet at moving at
   a *much* different rate than they are moving forward on the log.  To
   me this level of detail is critical, and has always been done well in
   Disney animations.  This is one of the first I can recall where it was
   so poorly done.

-- Ken Moreau

    If you're expecting the "Broadway-ness" of Beauty and the Beast, or the
    Little Mermaid, or the rapid fire funniness/action of Aladdin, then
    you're probably gonna be disappointed by this movie.  This movie
    reminded me more of a cross between Bambi and The Rescuers Down Under
    (an often forgotten, somewhat underrated movie that came out between The 
    Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast--it didn't fall into that
    Ashman/Menken "triology" most people think of when speaking of recent
    Disney hits).  
    
    Why? It reminded me of Bambi because the animals were generally
    "animal-like" -- that is to say, they didn't wear little clothes and
    mimic the human world.   It reminded me of Rescuers Down Under because
    TRDU made a lot of use of those lovely backgrounds, "layered" shots and
    color that we see in The Lion King.  The "follow the bird in" shot that
    we see in the prolog to the movie reminded me a lot of the Cody Flies
    with the Eagle Through the Clouds sequence in Rescuers Down Under.
    
    But anyway, what about the movie?  Well, my experience was already
    pushed way over to the positive side simply because of thoroughly
    unexpected (and always pleasant) viewing company, but the movie was
    definitely enjoyable in and of itself.  There were oodles of kids,
    including one very youngish sounding one located in the row in back of
    me, and I was a bit worried about noise/crying/having gum put in my
    hair.  The noise part toned down once the movie started rolling and lo!
    even during the part that parents are most concerned about, very little
    sniffling.  (In fact, I was probably one of the saddest people there,
    but damned if *I* was gonna sniffle... :)  And nobody stuck gum in my
    hair.
    
    You've heard the plot a billion times, pardon me if I don't cover it
    again.  :)  Just a few words about the movie in general:
    
    The story is Disney-esque, very much so.  Good guys are good, bad guys
    are bad, and never the twain shall meet save in a big climatic fight. 
    There's plenty of comic relief, a few morals are thrown in hither and
    yon, and there are a few musical numbers to make sure people buy the
    soundtrack.   The animation is well done, the voices are adequate (with
    the exception of James Earl Jones as Mufasa, Simba's dad and Jeremy
    Irons as Scar, his villianous brother -- these two are great, but how
    can you go wrong with so much rrrrumbling on the screen? :), the music
    is OK if not exactly what we're "used" to of late, and the score
    (instrumental parts, for folks not up on the lingo) by Hans Zimmer is 
    very stirring.  He should score more of their films. The obligatory love 
    story is a subplot (thank you). And for once, I wasn't completely aware 
    that the film was only about 90 minutes long.
    
    What didn't I like?  I would have made this a non-musical, but I think
    Disney now believes that you must have music to get a hit.  (Maybe
    that's why they think Rescuers Down Under didn't do well.  I'd say
    underpromotion, but that's me).  I'd like to see Disney also break the
    mold of "Mother's need not apply" -- Simba's mom, while alive (a
    breakthrough for most Disney moms, to be sure :), doesn't DO anything
    and even Nala, Simba's love interest, plays a pretty minor role. 
    Actually, for a hero Simba plays a pretty minor role until the
    last few minutes of film -- feels like the story was compressed.  On
    the slice of it, The Lion King lacked some depth of plot, if not
    character.   Only Mufasa and Scar really stood out as characters on
    their own.  Timon and Pumbaa, the comedic sidekicks, just stood out
    because they were funny. Simba stood out because the story was supposed
    to be about him, and he was in a lot of scenes, and he was likable
    pretty much only because he wasn't *un*likable.  
    
    All that aside, and looking at it as a Disney feature, rather than a
    movie movie, The Lion King was a good movie, fun to watch, and
    certainly worth seeing again.  I would hesitate to say it was better
    than, oh, Aladdin, or the Little Mermaid (I would not say it was better
    than Beauty and the Beast, but that's because I think Beauty and the
    Beast is the best Disney's ever offered for an animated feature), but
    it will surely be a big, big hit.  
    
    *** out of ****
    
    kim
    
    

    Let me say my 9 year old giggled at so many of the little humerous
    lines that he had me giggling.  We have to go again just to catch those
    funny one liners again.  
    
    I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the film given the differing
    points of view so far.  My kids loved it!  We were with a group
    ranging in age from 3 to 43 and everyone was pleased. 
    
    We went to the new BurlingTEN theater and the littlest ones said the
    film was TOO LOUD.  The surround sound was good - wish I had seen
    Jurassic Park there...
    
    -sandy
    
    

I enjoyed it, but it comes clear second place to 
"Beauty and the Beast".  Music was pretty forgettable,
story couldn't compete.  A couple of the animation 
sequences were superb.  Characterizations of Scar,
the Warthog, and Zasu (Zazu?) were very good indeed.

re: Rowan Atkinson doing Zasu!  He
had not been included in any of the pre-release hype,
so this came as a very pleasant surprise.

dcl

    RE: .7  by SMAUG::LEHMKUHL 
    
    >re: Rowan Atkinson doing Zasu!  He had not been included in any of the
    >pre-release hype, so this came as a very pleasant surprise.
    
    I thought that role was the pits.
    

    The Boston Globe clucked that it was too violent for children under 6,
    but our kids, 4 and 5, weren't bothered at all. They were much more
    frightened by the last scene in The Flintstones. Go figure.
    
    Agreed that the music was flat and it would have been better without
    the musical numbers. I can't remember a single song. Animation was nice
    of course but the story lacked any depth at all. The plot was about
    twenty minutes worth I think. It could have used a subplot or two. 
    
    It seemed very short, like only slightly over an hour. Based on the
    visual scale of the opening scenes I expected more of an epic, in terms 
    of plot richness.
    
    Neil

    >Agreed that the music was flat and it would have been better without
    > the musical numbers. I can't remember a single song.
    
    Interesting that you say this. National Public Radio reviewed this
    recently, and said that nobody was likely to leave the theatre humming
    any of the original songs (though they might hum "the Lion sleeps
    tonight").
    
    > Animation was nice of course but the story lacked any depth at all.
    
    I haven't seen this yet, but might just for the animation. The same NPR
    review said that this film did not seem to spring from the imagination
    of one person, or a group of people, but from the market research and
    quarterly statements of Disney, Inc. They went on to say that Disney
    nowadays has about the same sense of wonder, spontaneity, and childlike
    delight as does IBM, except without the whimsical sense of humor.
    
    Perhaps the sound track should include "Bungle in the Jungle"? :-o
    				Jim B.

    
    	This movie is CLEANING UP at the Mendon MA Drive-In.  In its
    	3rd week there, it's still showing to a full lot at least on
    	the weekends [I play pool next door].
    
    	I just wish they'd get rid of it and bring in something good
    	like "Speed" so I don't have to go to Worcester to see it.
    
    	8^)
    
    							GTI
    

    I've now seen this movie five times and it's still the best animated
    film I've seen yet. Hukuna Matata!!!!!!!

    
    	I second that!
    
    					Scott.
    

    Staying in a house that contained a 5-year-old last week, I finally saw
    this.  I liked it a lot.  Careful characterization, beautiful animated
    renderings of various wild animals.  I liked the very cat-like movements of
    the lion characters.  The voices were well cast and a number of the "vocal 
    performances" excellent.  
    
    I haven't seen "The Little Mermaid" or "Beauty and the Beast."  I saw
    "Aladdin" but didn't like it much, apart from a couple of spectacular
    animated sequences;  Robin Williams was just good enough to keep me
    watching for the 87 minutes of the movie, or whatever it was.  I thought
    "The Lion King" was much stronger, worthy of comparison with the great
    Disney animated features of yesteryear.
    
    Maybe I'll check out a couple of the other recent Disney animated
    films.
    
    -Stephen
     

    I have a question, what kind of animal is the partner of the wart
    hog??  I have a cup of coffe on this one.
    
    			Thanks,
    
    			Bart

    Timon is a meerkat
    
    tom

    
    	Hmm, I thought it was a lemur.  Oh well.
    
    					Scott.
    

    Ofcourse I WON,
    
    		Thanks,
    
    		Bart (GO Meerkats!!!)