One of the most useless films I've ever seen

It doesn’t take a wiz to understand why we got “Mufasa: The Lion King”. The movie has less to do with any sort of artistic expression and more to do with the fact that the crappy live action remake from a couple years ago made a billion. That’s right, a billion! I’ve yet to meet a single person who even likes it yet somehow, someway, Disney keeps the Circle of Life going right down the crapper.

The new prequel, directed by “Moonlight’s” Barry Jenkins, is a testament to irrelevance. In fact I expect people to use this movie in a sentence when trying to define irrelevance. It’s evidence that computers have completely ripped the soul out of Disney, that original, relevant storytelling is dead, and that they can tell a long-winded, empty, completely unentertaining tale only to lead us right back to conclusions we already knew before the film started.

But again the biggest problem of the film is still the photorealistic animals. Its hard to tell them apart. They may be a tad more expressive this time, you could swear you see them smiling, laughing, or experiencing joy on occasion. But the eyes really tell the tale here. For intensity, Jenkins uses close-ups of the animals a lot and really what we come away with is nothing short of distraction- a, still, animated thing that doesn’t have much life in the eyes.

The struggle to match up words with mouth movements is another big problem, one that Jenkins often avoids by doing aerial or circular shots around the characters rather than having the camera facing them. No image stays still There are other reasons why the characters in this movie never feel endearing, but trying to bring reality to this world has been a terrible mistake.

The movie is told in flashback with Rafiki telling Simba’s children the story of Mufasa (Aaron Pierre). As a young cub, he was carried off by a flood and winds up being adopted by a royal clan of lions, whose son Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is next in line to be king. Taka has always wanted a brother and Mufasa doesn’t care for leadership, yet as the two get older, it is Mufasa who seems the less cowardly and more leaderly of the two.

It shouldn’t be a surprise who Taka will eventually become but this time anyway the villain is Kiros, the leader of a fearsome group of white lions. Kiros is voiced by Mads Mikkelsen, who’s menacing German-ness is again being called upon to infuse a boring villain with some life. That Kiros wants to be king and is out for revenge just make him seem like a warmed over Scar.

As the story continues, Mufasa and Taka go on this journey to find a utopia known as Milele. Along the way they’re soon accompanied by Rafiki (John Kani), Zazu (Preston Nyman) and also Sarabi (Tiffany Boone), who we know as Simba’s mother. Though here she becomes part of a love triangle between Mufasa and Taka and i’m not sure what’s worse here- that the film thinks love triangles are what little kids want to see or that it goes with the biggest cliche that women are the cause of all rifts between men.

And that’s the real sad thing here is that nothing about this story resonates. In the simplest of terms, the animated movie was able to tell a fable but add all these extra things about fathers and sons, finding out who you are, and bravery. Here Mufasa seems fairly brave from the beginning. He just needs to trust himself. It’s not enough. And that he’s adopted, or Scar and him used to be BFF’s, or that a woman came between them? Who cares?

What’s worse is that the songs from Lin Manuel Miranda don’t work- they’re quickly cobbled together, cutesy little ditties made worse, again, by the poor animation. There’s action in the film but that gets repetitive- usually involving chases, or hanging from something, or getting carried off by water. And the humor is so lacking we actually need intrusive cut-ins from Timon and Pumba, who are so hard-up for material now they need to make fun of the broadway show.

There’s really nothing to this other than to get people excited over call-backs. At one point Mufasa
learns about the circle of life for the first time. Hans Zimmer’s original musical score is pumped in for every key moment. We see how Pride Rock gets formed. The whole thing is nothing short of lip service for people interested in minutiae. It’s so sad to see something so beloved be reduced this much. “Mufasa” is literally one of the most useless films i’ve ever seen.