The Lion King Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

6. Jon Favreau's Incredibly Disappointing Direction

Despite the obvious nervousness about Disney giving The Lion King the "live action" treatment, it was easy to be relatively optimistic with Jon Favreau at the helm, given that his 2016 remake of The Jungle Book wasn't just great - it arguably bettered the original.

Sadly Favreau can't muster the same energy or stylistic nous this time, delivering an oddly flat experience more often than not, which fails to make the cinematic best of many of the original animation's most iconic moments.

Mufasa's death, for example, is unintentionally comical in this version due to Favreau's awkward attempt to copy the original's framing, even though it's not remotely appropriate for photorealistic animals.

Misguidedly, he also throws up an iffy slow-motion flashback to Mufasa's death during Simba's final confrontation with Scar, and it looks hilariously cheap for a $260 million movie.

That's not to forget basic storytelling missteps like setting the "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" musical number during the day for some reason, and basically toning down the colourful vibrancy of the source material to be more Earthy and "realistic."

Favreau also over-relies on smooth tracking shots which feels like a lazy attempt to avoid coming up with any actually creative shots, and despite the obviously prestigious nature of the project, it seems like the celebrated filmmaker is more-or-less on auto-pilot for the most part.

It feels like a film directed by a VFX house rather than an actual filmmaker with a vision, as though the animators and artists were just given a copy of the 1994 original and told to figure it out for themselves.