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movie review - Mufasa: The Lion King

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

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.