The movie has a large cast of other colorful characters, including a hornbill named Zazu ( Rowan Atkinson), who is confidant and advisor to King Mufasa ( James Earl Jones). This time they are a meerkat named Timon (voice by Nathan Lane) and a warthog named Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella), who cheer up Simba during his long exile. When Simba tells him, "You're so weird," he replies "You have no idea," in exactly the tone he used in " Reversal of Fortune.") It is an unwritten law that animated features have comic relief, usually in the form of a duet or trio of goofy characters who become buddies with the hero. (The movie makes a sly reference to a famous earlier role by Irons. Worse, he convinces Simba that the cub is responsible, and the guilty little heir slinks off into the wastelands. With a voice by Jeremy Irons, and facial features suggestive of Irons' gift for sardonic concealment, Scar is a mannered, manipulative schemer who succeeds in bringing about the death of the king. Villains are often the most memorable characters in a Disney animated film, and Scar is one of the great ones, aided by a pack of yipping hyenas who act as his storm troopers. He has an enemy - his uncle Scar, the king's jealous brother, who wants to be king himself one day. Early scenes show Simba as a cute, trusting little tike who believes everyone loves him. And all through "The Lion King" the filmmakers perform a balancing act between the fantasy of their story and the reality of the jungle. Of course this coming together of zebra and gazelle, monkey and wildebeest, fudges on the uncomfortable fact that many of these animals survive by eating one another. The cute little cub is held aloft from a dramatic spur of rock, and all his future minions below hail him, in a staging that looks like the jungle equivalent of a political rally. The cub's birth is announced in the opening sequence of the movie, called "The Circle of Life," which is an evocative collaboration of music and animation to show all of the animals of the African veld gathering to hail their future king. It tells the tale of the birth, childhood and eventual manhood of Simba, a lion cub. In another sense, it is based on half the stories in classical mythology. "The Lion King" is the first Disney animated feature not based on an existing story. These most recent four animated features are once again true "family films," in that they entertain adults as well as children. Later Disney films drifted off into the neverland of innocuous "children's movies," which were harmless but not very exciting. Jumbo, and " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," with its wicked stepmother, tapped into primal fears and desires. The inspiration for these recent films comes from the earliest feature cartoons created by Walt Disney himself, who in movies like "Dumbo," with the chaining of Mrs. The all-star voice cast includes Donald Glover (adult Simba), Beyoncé (adult Nala), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Scar), Seth Rogen (Pumbaa), Billy Eichner (Timon), and the venerable James Earl Jones reprising his inimitable role as King Mufasa.The film is the latest in a series of annual media events from Disney, which with " The Little Mermaid," " Beauty and the Beast" and " Aladdin" reinvented its franchise of animated feature films. And it has clearly positive themes and messages: Parents and kids can discuss issues regarding family, friendship, loss, responsibility, and community. That said, there's plenty of humor, too, including potty jokes from Pumbaa and Timon (the original movie's implied "farted" is said loud and proud in this version of the pair's "Hakuna Matata"). The insatiably hungry and scavenging hyenas, the terrifying and tear-jerking wildebeest stampede sequence (which ends in a tragic death), and the claw- and teeth-filled fight scenes are undeniably scary, even for those who know what to expect. Because of the realism (you'll likely forget you're not watching real animals some of the time), the violence is definitely more intense and potentially upsetting here than in the more cartoony classic. Parents need to know that The Lion King is an extremely realistic computer-animated remake of Disney's beloved 1994 original.
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