Like many of you, I first saw The Lion King in 1994.  I was a kid on the edge of college: to old for cartoons.  but to young for adulthood. Yesterday I watched it again, but this time decidedly as an adult, and with my 4 year old son.  And strangely enough, in 3D. 1994 was half a lifetime ago, and The Lion King blew me away. Howard Ashman had died, but Alan Menken was still here.  The skill and craftsmanship that had made The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin each wonderful films had not quite crumbed under the pretention and excess that would over-burden most of the next decade of Disney films, giving a a little unknown studio named Pixar a giant hole in which to drive into the international zeitgeist with some silly movie about toys that you might have heard of.

I’ve always loved The Lion King and I won’t spend much time on the plot.  You know it.  You’ve probably seen it on VHS or DVD or maybe even on broadway.  I sure have.    Instead I’m going to focus on what’s new this time.

The headline addition is the 3D which I was frankly a bit underwhelmed with.   Some of the sweeping african vistas are well served by the effect, but mostly it’s a straight up 2D to 3D conversion.  It’s nice, but it’s not worth the dimming affect of wearing sunglasses inside. Most made for 3D films feature a host of moments where something reaches out into the very near plane, but since The Lion King predates that, we are thankfully mostly spared that tedious convention. Continue reading →