Classic American films: The Lion King – Disney’s unlikely triumph is as strange and lovely as ever
- The 1994 Disney classic animation, with songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, is the bestselling home video ever
- Cultural insensitivities aside, it is a magical film worth seeing on the big screen
In this regular feature series on some of the most talked-about films, we examine the legacy of classics and re-evaluate modern blockbusters. We continue this week with the 1994 film The Lion King .
One of the stars of the so-called Disney Renaissance, that period in the late 1980s/early 1990s when the studio began winning awards and raking in the cash again, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s 1994 smash hit is a strange and lovely film. Strange because, on the surface, there’s very little to it, and lovely because, well, you’ll see.
With sequels, stage shows and a CGI remake out this summer, The Lion King has entered popular conscious, but in many respects it was an unlikely success.
The plot, essentially Hamlet meets The Jungle Book, is a hard sell; Elton John and Tim Rice aren’t the first people you’d think of to write an African musical/comedy (though they do a wonderful job on the likes of Circle of Life and Hakuna Matata); and some of the material is so odd/adult you wonder what the filmmakers were thinking/smoking.
We begin with the birth of Simba the lion (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas, then Matthew Broderick), heir to the throne held by his father Mufasa (James Earl Jones). But when Mufasa is killed by his brother, the evil Scar (Jeremy Irons), Simba runs away and takes up with comedy characters Timon (Nathan Lane), a meerkat, and Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella), a warthog, until his childhood friend Nala (Moira Kelly) comes to bring him home and end Scar’s tyranny.
And that’s it. But it’s not the destination that counts so much as the journey.