tral relationship, while the latter
became a depressing dirge that no
child would sit through.
Favreau’s Lion King can’t really be
considered ‘live-action’ as every
frame is animated to create the
illusion that we’re really watching
life play out on the African tun-
dra. The opening ‘Circle of Life’
sequence is quite something to
behold, but the problems arise as
soon as the animals start opening
their jaws and beaks.
In the early ‘80s, the cult Brit-
ish comic ‘Eagle’ experimented
with photo-stories, replacing hand
drawn artwork with poorly framed
photographs, usually starring
whoever happened to be hang-
ing around the office at the time.
The comic quickly realized that
such an approach severely limited
the stories they could tell, as there
are are only so many scenarios
you can create in a suburban of-
fice, while the pencil allows you
to explore unlimited worlds. Fa-
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 61
vreau runs into the same problem
here. If you want the audience
to believe they’re watching ac-
tual animals, you can’t have them
dancing around like they did in
the animated version, so the musi-
cal numbers here are pretty much
redundant. Where the original
accompanied its songs with mon-
tages that exploited the potential
of animation, Favreau simply has
his animals trot along as the lyrics
come out of their gaping maws in
an unconvincing fashion.
Along with the comedy, which
rarely lands here, the musical se-
quences jar with the rest of the
movie. This Lion King is a tonal car
crash. The photo-realism strips the
story down to its Darwinian car-
cass, leaving us in no doubt about
the cruelty of life in the animal
kingdom. You can give Simba and
his friends all the cute dialogue
you want, but once you make him
look like an actual lion you leave
the audience in no doubt as to why
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