I didn’t like The Lion King (2019). My complaints are essentially the same I’ve had with other ‘live action’ remakes of Disney’s animated movies like Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. Not only is there nothing about the movie to recommend it over the original, it add feels saggy and tame on its own merits.

Everyone knows The Lion King. It is the tale of cat Hamlet, a young prince must loses his father and fights for his throne against his treacherous uncle. The story works in the broad strokes as well as it ever did. There is still a big break in the middle of the movie that doesn’t quite work. But it still does a good job of setting up its characters and their philosophies and having them come into conflict. It is too bad there is a strictly better version of this movie that already exists.

There is a clip running around comparing the new version of “Hakuna Matata” with the old one, with the comparisons illustrating just how lacking the new one is. That is illustrative of the entire movie. The animated version has a lot of energy, a lot of coming because it is not limited by what actual animals can do. They could draw a lion doing anything, like swinging on a vine or standing on pyramid of singing animals. Real, or realistically animated, animals cannot do that. So instead of anything interesting, characters just walk around while singing. It feels like all the personality is gone. It is hard to create human emotion in a realistic cat face, let alone a warthog. The hyenas all look the same. The baboon mystic Rafiki can no longer do kung fu, Timon can no longer hula dance. Nothing interesting can happen. In making the lions look real, it makes it a lot harder to tell Scar and Simba apart in their big climactic fight scene. It is just two tawny beasts in the dark batting at each other.

The problem with this movie is that unless you are completely enamored by the digital effects wizardry, there is absolutely nothing about that makes it worth watching over the original. It is the Lion King, with less personality, less energy, just simply less. The movie tries to find more for its female characters to do, but it mostly fails. Giving Nala and Sarabi a few more lines really changes nothing. The only thing that I would even consider calling an improvement is Billy Eichner as Timon, who makes him a little more acid that Nathan Lane did. But even then, Lane was great.

The Lion King has made a bunch of money for Disney. So we’ll get more of these. And I’m part of the problem, I guess, because I went to see it. But I am tapping out. I’ve enjoyed exactly one of these remakes and The Lion King is likely the last one I’ll see in a theater.

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