BRIAN VINER reviews Mufasa: The Lion King: Spectacular, but this Lion King isn't a whisker on the original

Mustafa: The Lion King (PG, 118 mins)

Verdict: Does the job 

Rating:

Amazingly, three decades have passed since we first set eyes on The Lion King, the joyous animated musical which reminded us, after a lacklustre few years, that Disney could still create spellbinding cinematic magic.

My children, all born in the 1990s, grew up knowing the words of those Tim Rice/Elton John songs like catechisms. For them, the fruity baritone menace of Jeremy Irons as Scar defined villainy, while Mufasa (James Earl Jones) was a byword for valour. As soon as they were old enough, we took them to see the stage version.

Those memories of The Lion King were so precious that they baulked at the idea of seeing the heavily digitalised 2019 remake, even though I assured them that it was fun.

But they would be right to swerve this overblown sequel.

Mufasa: The Lion King (dedicated to Jones, who died in September) strains with every sinew to make us feel the love tonight — to paraphrase one of the original song titles.

It is sometimes spectacular on the eye, with all those computerised bells and whistles combining to bring the African savannah to vibrant, exhilarating life. Yet the film, directed by Barry Jenkins (who made the Oscar-festooned 2016 film Moonlight), is touched with a spot of leonine laryngitis. Hard as it tries, it never quite roars.

Although a sequel in the sense that the grown-up Simba (voiced by Donald Glover) is now King of the Pride Lands, it is really a prequel, as wise mandrill Rafiki (John Kani) tells the stirring life story of Simba’s late father, Mufasa, to his wide-eyed granddaughter, Princess Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter, herself the daughter of what passes for US royalty, Beyoncé and Jay‑Z). Beyoncé is also back in the voice cast, as Simba’s queen, Nala.

Anyway, after being swept far away from his parents Afia and Masego by raging floodwaters, Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) reaches adolescence as the adopted son of kindly lioness Eshe (Thandiwe Newton), whose disagreeable mate Obasi (Lennie James) is less well disposed to a ‘stray’.

Mufasa forms a strong fraternal bond with Eshe’s natural son Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr), which intensifies when a belligerent army of lions, the so-called ‘Outsiders’, arrives to conquer Obasi’s pride. Mufasa and Taka escape — with the Outsiders, led by the ill-tempered Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), in hot pursuit.

This all bowls along watchably enough, and as the pursuers close in there is a clifftop scene perhaps intended to evoke Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), although the film lacks the wit to make it sing.

Indeed, it’s a surprise there isn’t more wit throughout. The screenwriter is Jeff Nathanson, whose credits include not just the 2019 remake but also the wonderful Catch Me If You Can (2002). But this time he somehow contrives to make the banter between Timon the meerkat (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa the warthog (Seth Rogen) more tiresome than funny.   

Most of the songs, though written by Broadway superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda, are decidedly forgettable. Of course he has a mighty act to follow: Tim Rice nailed the lyrics perfectly back in 1994. But this isn’t even tepid, reheated Rice.

As Mufasa and Taka seek the Elysian, sun-drenched lands known as Milele, the chase rather oddly takes them across a snowy mountain range.

In response to pedants everywhere, concerned about the unexpected arrival of Himalayan-style avalanches in sub-Saharan Africa, I suppose the filmmakers might make the point that meerkats and warthogs don’t buddy up in real life, either. Or maybe it’s their mischievous nod to climate change. Either way, it’s a bit weird.

Still, the objective of all this, narrative-wise, is to show us how Mufasa overcame a traumatic cubhood to grow into a heroic king, and also what became of Taka, who, in a climactic fight and no spoiler intended, acquires a nasty facial... scar. In that respect, the film does its job.

It’s a safe bet for a family outing to the pictures these Christmas holidays. But it’s not as good as the 2019 movie, and not a whisker on the magnificent original.

Mufasa: The Lion King is in cinemas now. 

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (U, 70 mins) 

Verdict: Simply impeccable

Rating:

By contrast, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl lives up to all the previous features from the clay-animation studio Aardman: it’s another triumph of pure British silliness, fused with pure British genius.

Except that he is now voiced by Ben Whitehead, replacing the late Peter Sallis but sounding very much like him, Wallace is his old familiar self, living with Gromit in West Wallaby Street surrounded by a plethora of daft Heath Robinson-style gadgets merely to get him up in the morning.

He remains a civic hero following the events of The Wrong Trousers (1993), in which he foiled the fiendish scheme of sinister criminal mastermind (and penguin) Feathers McGraw to steal a priceless blue diamond.

Feathers is still safely banged up in the zoo — ‘literally doing bird’ — but is now using his devilish craftiness to take revenge on Wallace and pinch the gem again.

Computer-hacking is one of Feathers’ many nefarious skills, so when Wallace invents a robotic garden gnome called Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), which is hired out to the neighbours to do odd jobs, the roguish penguin devises a way to re-programme the ever-cheerful Norbot as downright evil.

Needless to add, Feathers also escapes from captivity, again by fixing a red rubber glove on his head and posing as a chicken.

With Norbot now wreaking garden-related havoc around town, Wallace’s name is mud. So inevitably, when the diamond again goes missing, he becomes the chief suspect.

Luckily, dim-witted Chief Inspector Mackintosh (Peter Kay, reprising his role in The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit) has a smarter sidekick, PC Mukherjee (Lauren Patel), while Wallace of course has the ever-resourceful Gromit, putting aside his reading matter (A Room Of One’s Own by Virginia Woof) to rescue the reputation of his hapless master.

The adventure culminates in a canal-boat chase across the Yorkshire-Lancashire border that is one of the most cherishably funny action sequences I’ve seen for years, comparable with the epic train chase in The Wrong Trousers.

Northerners in particular (and I write as a proud Lancastrian) will relish the gags (‘No Parkin’ made me laugh out loud) while the cine-literate are indulged, too, with glorious tongue-in-cheek references to the Bond films, The Italian Job, even The African Queen. What a huge and welcome Christmas treat!

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is in select cinemas and will be on BBC1 and BBC iPlayer on Christmas Day.