journal features

movie review - Mufasa: The Lion King

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tachikawa, 2024.12.27

This is an animated prequel to The Lion King, a now-thirty-year-old Disney flick. As with all prequels, it is quite unnecessary, but The Girl and I went to the theater to see it nonetheless.

I enjoyed the visuals, to be sure. But on the whole this felt like a pastiche of scenes rather than a story, and it's something I've seen a lot in the past few years. There's a rushed sequence at the beginning that takes the titular character from his parents at a tender age. This leads to his meeting a new "brother", and the two become inseparable. But then one of the characters begins to wobble, not in terms of strength of character or in motivation or something in-story but rather veering from one nature to another as needed to movie the story along and bring us to a place where the original movie can happen.

Did I mention it's a musical? Well, it's got some musical numbers such as when the genuinely menacing leader of a rival lion pride sings about "making you go bye-bye". Quite a jarring tonality mis-match.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be crazier than I've been on this trip. I know very few things I'd take seriously any more. I'd certainly be less hygenic... I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd have many more of them, in fact I'd try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel lighter, much lighter than I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and I'd stay that way later in the fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people and pick more flowers and dance more often. If I had it to do all over again - but you see, I don't.

—Jorge Luis Borges