Review by Alana Chancy and Dan Berry
Director: Barry Jenkins
Starring: Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Tiffany Boone, Donald Glover, Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, Anika Noni Rose, Blue Ivy Carter, and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
Movie Length: 1 hour 58 minutes
What it’s about: A prequel to both the 1994 animated The Lion King, and the 2019 “live action” remake of The Lion King. The movie delves more into the origin of both Mufasa and Scar, as well as helps introduce some other characters from the original movie.
Alana’s thoughts: I’ll admit that, like most 90s kids raised on Disney, I went into this latest franchise entry with a craving for comfortable nostalgia with a hint of hope for original storytelling.
Appealing directly to my demographic, the movie opens with a few callbacks and Rafiki sitting down The NeverEnding Story style with Simba’s daughter (Kiara) and Timon and Pumbaa to tell Mufasa’s origin story.
The nostalgia continues with Mufasa very quickly getting thrust into his own coming of age adventure, with recognizable companions that tie the movies together neatly.
Where this story makes a huge departure from the 90s classic is the fact that Mufasa is not the most compelling character. In fact, the movie draws many parallels to our personal coming of age adventures.
In The Lion King, we get a classic 90s coming of age adventure dipped in sugary sweet pop songs (and teen heartthrobs) – explaining that growing up means finding a couple of best friends, falling in love, and fairly easily fighting your enemy to be the hero. It’s much the same message that society sold us – work hard and everything will work out.
Mufasa: The Lion King tries to echo the same sentiment with Mufasa’s character. But while Mufasa and Simba represent what we were told as kids, Scar’s story rings more true to our millennial lived experience. Scar was promised the world by well-meaning parents. Scar tries to fight for his family and get the girl. Scar tries to do the work and be the hero. But with ill-equipped training and coping skills, not to mention a pandemic-sized attack of other lions, Scar falls a little short.
Where I believe Mufasa truly succeeds is its ability to open the door for healthy conversations. And of course a healthy dose of catchy new music to listen to between belting Hakuna Matata all the way home from the theater (which I may or may not have done…)
Dan’s thoughts: Going into the movie I only remembered bits and pieces from the original movie. That being said this “live action” prequel hit a lot of the notes that fans of the the original will enjoy.
We get to see how Mufasa came to be king, how Scar got his name (and the scar), how Rafiki got his walking stick, and more little easter eggs that are sprinkled in the nearly 2 hour movie. The movie also had a few meta type moments (referencing the Broadway play was one of them).
Like the original (and 2019 remake), the movie features quite original songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda as well as a score composed by Disney veteran Dave Metzger which helped keep the movie going for it’s nearly 2 hour run time.
Of course we have to talk about the animation/visual effects of the movie being that this a big budget ($200 million) Disney production. The photorealistic animation was very well done, from the animals expressions and fur, to the nature and landscape scenes, the team behind the animation did a terrific job all around.
All in all, I enjoyed the movie and fans of the original will probably like it as well for the nostalgia factor.
Alana’s score: 4.5 out of 5
Dan’s score: 4 out of 5
Mufasa: The Lion King is now in theaters
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