(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

Disney has announced plans for "The Lion Guard," a TV series following on The Lion King. This is as good a time as any for me to say that my feelings on TLK today are the same as they were 20 years ago: very mixed.

You might think that one of the most popular Disney movies ever would be especially great to someone with as much interest in talking animals as I have. Well, it's not really. And I don't blame the fact that on my first viewing, I was 12, which can be an awkward age for appreciating "family" entertainment. Heck, I sat with a same-age friend and saw it again in a classroom (albeit faultily dubbed in Spanish). Pushing the G rating might have helped in that regard.

Don't get me wrong; I did watch again voluntarily, for a total of four or five times, not including the Broadway show. The visual effects still look impressive today, leading me to wonder if Disney will release a 3D version. It is one of the few movies to bring me close to tears after early childhood. The music is...well, perhaps Hollywood-overwrought, but my family played the soundtrack a lot. And yes, the animals are often cute.

Nevertheless, I was totally unsurprised when my friend darthhowie several years ago gave it a 6 out of 10, calling it the weakest entry in Disney's winning streak that started with The Little Mermaid. He didn't talk about it for long, but his stated main reason had to do with a bland romance between Simba and Nala. In my less generous moments, I agree with Howie entirely.

The funny thing is, Simba and Nala actually seem to have a more promising basis for romance than almost any other Disney pair and certainly any other in that era: While Ariel and Eric hardly know each other before marriage, Belle and the Beast evoke Stockholm syndrome, and Aladdin's background of theft and dishonesty makes him an unlikely lasting match for Jasmine, at least Simba and Nala have been cubhood playmates. So what's the problem?

The temptation is to blame weak writing. For all the crafty dialog, I could summarize the story much faster than for the three other movies touched on above. It hardly matters that the writers didn't adapt an existing fairy tale (and the Hamlet parallels are sparse); simplicity cheapens originality. And despite getting a spinoff series, Timon and Pumbaa don't add much good with their somewhat out-of-place humor.

In all honesty, as I came to realize from the overly common fan drawings on deviantART, the main underlying trouble can be traced back to the low level of anthropomorphism. When only Rafiki and Timon ever use accessories of any sort, it's hard to come up with many things for the mostly quadrupedal cast to do. Wild animals lead challenging yet functionally simple lives, and it takes more human characteristics to maintain my interest. Introducing a little magic late in the game doesn't help. In short, I don't blame the writers, just the premise. ("Downscale" may focus primarily on wild talking animals, but they're only so wild; one regularly interacts with a human, and the others show at least a passing interest in human things.)

Might I add what a shame it is that for all Disney's interest in geographic and cultural diversification in later years, they still don't have any films set in sub-Saharan Africa with native humans. OK, I haven't seen Tarzan, but it certainly stars White people. At most half the voice actors in TLK are Black, probably none of them having lived in Africa.

I'm not above watching kid shows nowadays, but no matter how popular TLG gets, I won't bother. TLK gave me my fill.

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the film quite a bit when it first came out. Timon and Pumbaa seemed to ruin the magic in the middle, but otherwise the storytelling seemed pretty solid throughout, Scar made a fine villain, and the animation style was vibrant and memorable. My biggest disappointment came years later, when I learned it was essentially a plagiarized version of Kimba, The White Lion. I haven't seen it in over a decade, I should give it another viewing and see how it's held up.