Saturday, September 10, 2011

"The Lion King" (1994)

Can you feel the love tonight? This installment of Docs on Films' love comes just in time for our first animated feature's (totally unnecessary) re-release in 3D. That's right, it's the "The Lion King"! The theme song might just as well have read, can you spot the Hamlet references? We've got a (lion) king (voiced by James Earl Jones, of course) meeting a suspicious end; we've got a young princeling, Simba, (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas [remember him! a proto-Bieber!] and Matthew Broderick), unwilling to embrace his powers; and we've got a nefarious and scheming uncle (Jeremy Irons, slumming). Thank god this Disney blockbuster decided to stick with the tried-and-true formula of wacky sidekicks (hi Nathan Lane!) rather than playing out its plot's full Oedipal implications. A welcome break from "Taxi Driver" and "The Butcher," but not nearly my favorite Disney. I wish we could have engineered a field trip to watch the Broadway musical instead!

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