Westside is the place to be this festive season for quality family time enjoying ocean wildlife at the National Sea Life Centre in Brindleyplace. The kids will also love the incredible giant giraffe outside the Legoland Discovery Centre, next to the Utilita Arena.
But for really wild beasts and exciting water action, both Westside’s 12-screen multiplexes Cineworld Broad Street and Odeon Luxe Broadway Plaza have multiple screenings of Disney’s new take on The Lion King legend.
Mufasa: The Lion King (PG, 119 mins). Time flies when you’re a mane man. It’s already 30 years since the voices of Matthew Broderick (Mufasa’s son Simba) and Jeremy Irons (Mufasa’s evil brother Scar) graced the original ‘king of the jungle’ animation, first released in the UK in 1994.
After two turn-of-the-century video sequels, we’re now heading backwards and forwards into the unchartered, overly-complex world of a musical prequel, with flashbacks!
In echoes of Bambi (1937), lion cub and future king Mufasa loses sight of his parents when a flash flood sweeps him away. Fellow cub Taka (the future Scar) saves Mufasa, giving rise to a song called I Always Wanted a Brother. But Taka’s own father Obasi is suspicious of the new arrival to their rival pride.
Mufasa grows as a result of various challenges and impresses Sarabi (future mother of their son, Simba, who would be killed by Scar in the original movie). Mads Mikkelsen voices the new villain of the piece – Kiros, leader of ‘white lions’.
The film pays tribute to the late James Earl Jones who died in September, the original ‘Remember who you are!’ voice of Mufasa in 1994.
The verdict: ☆☆☆
Director Barry Jenkins was an odd choice for this film, given that Moonlight (2016) won a Best Picture Oscar and he followed that with the excellent If Beale Street Could Talk (2018).
Here, he remains faithful to the spirit of The Lion King (1994), with Mufasa really having to earn his place in the new pride. The overall results of trying to enhance the 2019 style of Jon Favreau’s ‘photorealistically animated’ remake (which had its own Oscar nod for visual effects) is hit and miss.
But some of the visual scenes are incredible regardless, especially in IMAX sound and vision where the flooded river sequence will have youngsters peering through their fingers.
More significantly, the songs and score are no match for the original, and the shifting chronology is sufficiently distracting to ensure that Mufasa is too disjointed to earn the love of the 1994 original.
The Lion King was just 88 minutes of movie magic. Repetitive chase sequences make Mufasa’s story last for almost two hours. An incomprehensible decision in by Disney.
Given that this is primarily a prequel, they might have been better advised for the longer term to take the timeless hand-drawn route for the sake of future generations wanting to follow the story through.
A quick recap
Directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, The Lion King (U) won Oscars for best song (Elton John / Tim Rice) and best score (Hans Zimmer).
More significantly, perhaps, it was one of the decade’s great animations (including Beauty and the Best in 1991 and Toy Story in 1996) which led to the Academy Awards finally introducing a ‘best animated feature’ category (first won by Shrek in 2002).
Meanwhile, The Lion King Musical has been running for 25 years since 1997 in London’s West End.
● Your reviewer: Graham Young has been reviewing films for the media in Birmingham for the last 35 years, serving the Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post, Sunday Mercury, BirminghamLive and BBC WM. He was the 1996 Regional Film Journalist of the Year.
ENDS
