"Aladdin" and "The Lion King"… Again

I'm not sure what kind of morbid curiosity keeps making me watch these movies. A very few have turned out to be decent, but mostly the live-action Disney remakes have been middling to awful. Despite tons of expensive CGI, they never look anywhere near as good as the hand-drawn originals. Despite the famous names involved, precious little charm or originality comes through. The filmmakers outright lift full scenes and sequences, shot for shot, with little to distinguish them except for a new coat of digital paint. There's no artistic justification for these movies to exist, but plenty of economic justification, of course.

"The Lion King" is the worst offender to date, with no new characters, a single new song, and only a few minor adjustments to the existing script and characters to accommodate a new voice cast. Photorealistic CGI animals on beautiful live action backgrounds fill in for the cartoon critters, and it's a very odd experience to see the opening "Circle of Life" sequence recreated in this way. The visuals are certainly impressive, aping recent high profile nature documentaries, but anyone who's seen the 1994 version will probably find it impossible to stop making negative comparisons. The more realistic animals are necessarily less expressive. Even with Beyonce and Donald Glover playing the adult Nala and Simba, the songs are more lackluster. The remake is also considerably longer, with unnecessarily expanded scenes and performances.

I appreciate the effort that went into making all of these CGI animals look their best, and many of the resulting images are breathtaking. Some of the performances, especially for minor characters like Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), Zazu (John Oliver), and Shenzi (Florence Kasumba), have enough deviation from the original to be enjoyable in their own right. Jeff Nathanson's script beefs up some of the themes and downplays the sillier aspects of the original. Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) benefits the most from this, less of a caricature and more of a despicable schemer. However, every single time I heard James Earl Jones as Mufasa, largely repeating the same lines we all remember, I found myself cringing. It was reverse uncanny valley on so many different levels.

I have no idea why anyone who enjoys the 1994 "Lion King" would watch the 2019 version. However, I think you could make a case for the 2019 "Aladdin" having some appeal. It's not an especially strong feature, but at least it's different from the animated version in some important ways. The biggest change is that Will Smith is playing the Genie and making no attempt to do a Robin Williams impression. And he's perfectly fine just being Will Smith in "Hitch" mode, wearing ridiculous costumes, and gamely trying to sing along to all the old songs. There's also some significant reworking of the story and characters, putting Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) in a more prominent role, and giving her a funny handmaiden named Dalia (Nasim Pedrad) for the Genie to romance.

One of the big selling points of the new version is the almost entirely non-white cast, lead by Smith and Mena Massoud as Aladdin. There's some fudging of cultural details, and Agrabah seems to now be the Middle East by way of Bollywood, but it's still a nice thing to see after too many years of "Prince of Persia" style casting. Massoud is a little rough, and Marwen Kenzari's more grounded take on Jafar is pretty bland, but they function decently enough. There are recreations of sequences from the 1992 "Aladdin" constantly, but also notable new scenes and some narrative space carved out so that the new versions of the characters ring true as different personalities. I enjoyed the new bits where Aladdin clumsily attempts to play a prince and court Jasmine.

Guy Ritchie is almost totally invisible here as director, aside from some aggressively over-edited chase sequences toward the beginning. Instead, he's mostly just orchestrating the pageantry and obnoxious amounts of CGI. To be fair, some of the recreations like the "Friend Like Me" number are well adapted, energetic, and pretty fun to watch. Then you have the awful "A Whole New World" sequence, where everything is too dark, and the flying carpet is obviously not a carpet.

Still, considering the track record of the live-action adaptations so far, I'm inclined to give "Aladdin" a mild pass. It's very derivative and rough around the edges, but at least it's not the slavish copy that "The Lion King" too frequently is.
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