DisneyToons review: The Lion King 1 1/2

Disneytoon’s 24th film.

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My opinion right after watching the film

My opinion right after watching the film was that it is not as bad as I thought it would be…… in the beginning. In the middle, they just started shitting on the quality and integrity of The Lion King with its poor attempts to shove Timon and Pumba in every single scenario. If they took this as an opportunity to dig in deeper with Timon and Pumba, with keeping some of the humor the two have, than this film could have been better.

Production

Apparently they had plans making The Lion King 3 all the way back in 2000 for a 2001 release, but clearly things changed through production. The film became The Lion King 1 1/2 sometime in 2002 or 2003.

Story

The frame story of The Lion King is started from Timon (Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella) watching the film in the theater, rewinding from The Circle of Life to their introduction in Hakuna Matata.They decide to tell them the story from the beginning, and that they were at the events of The Lion King form the very beginning.

We get a backstory of Timon’s life before meeting everyone in the film, where he was the clumsy, misunderstood careless, and lazy meerkat, who screwed things up for his meerkat society. Literally all of the meerkats are carbon copies of Timon’s designs, with a minor tweak in color. His mother Ma (Julie Kavner) and uncle Max (Jerry Stiller) are introduced, and the former is trying to encourage her son softly, telling him that he needs to step up. Timon hates his life because they have to hide and hide (isn’t that a main component of Hakuna Matata? To hide from their problems, and have no care about anything?)

It is nice that they decided to show a backstory of Timon. If you are going to make the side characters a main character of another film, you might as well give them something that we did not know before.
They give him a job to look after the hyenas for the tribe to prove himself, and what does he decide to do? He decides to sing about how bad everyone else is, how he is looking out for himself, and how he wants to enjoy everything, and kicking back. He completely ignores his job to sing about his desperate ego to notice the hyenas, and almost sacrifices their lives to the hyenas. They snub Timon, who ends up leaving to be on his own. I can’t even feel bad for him, since this was deliberate on his end. It was not like he fell, and the hyenas came. He deliberately decided to blow off his job to sing about how he hates his life, and about how he needs to tend to his ego.

Timon is on his way, and ends up bumping into Rafiki (Robert Guillaume) after balling his eyes about. Rafiki tells him to find Hakuna Matata by looking ahead, which he instantly sees as Pride Rock. Timon hears a growl, and runs away from the animal approaching him, who ends up being Pumbaa. Timon thought he was going to eat him, but Pumbaa reassures him that he only followed him because he saw him crying. It is weird that they gave Timon a backstory, but refuse to give Pumbaa one. All we know is that people run from him because of his smell and habits (we already knew this in the first film, so nothing new is being added).

They start to walk together, and it just so happens to be the same day Simba (Matthew Broderick) is born (Circle of Life), and Pumbaa smells a bowel movement/gas start to rumble. When it finally comes out, it causes some of the animals to knock over and pass out, or to bend their noses instead of the respect of Mufasa and Sarabi.

Excuse my language, but hell no to this shit. This moment COMPLETELY shits on the classic moment from The Lion King, and turns it into a tasteless, disrespectful scene. The film then makes the I Just Can’t Wait to be King look like it was a day after, when Timon and Pumbaa wake up to hear all of the rumbling above them.
The duo find their way to the graveyards to find another place to stay, and they even manage to make their way to the stampede that killed Mufasa. I cannot take this shit seriously. It only makes Timon and Pumbaa more annoying, and makes you see the original in a completely different (meaning a more distasteful) manner.

So Timon and Pumbaa continue to bond, because both are outcasts and alone, which is nice enough. The scene they used to show them bonding was pretty tasteful. Ma ends up finding her way to Rafiki, asking for her son. When he told her that he told Timon to follow the metaphor of Hakuna Matata, she loses it, knowing her son takes metaphors literally, and thinks he is starving.

We get some supposedly fun moments of Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa hang out with one another, which ended up including a bug slurping scene between Timon and Simba -_-. Simba starts growing up, and they end up hanging out, until Nala (Moira Kelly) reappears in his life, and Timon continues whining. I dislike him more in this film than I did in the first film.

Because Timon is a hating, selfish, jealous, lonely, irresponsible mofo, he decides to sabotage Nala with anything he comeds up with, and having Pumbaa helping him out. This is crapping on the scene of Can You Feel the Love Tonight, and I just cannot support it. They see Simba and Nala argue, which he cheers at.

Soon after, they find out that Simba left to return home, and Nala tells them that he needs them to support him take on Scar. Pumbaa follows, and tells Timon that Hakuna Matata is nothing without Simba, since it is about who you are with. The continue arguing, and Pumbaa left, only for Timon to follow a few minutes later, knowing they are right.

During the climax of The Lion King, Timon only ends up calling his meerkat tribe for support when the hyenas are after them. I do not like how they concluded the plot with the meerkats and Timon, since it is very unsatisfying. I do not know why they would start the film with a side-plot, and there is little to no payoff at the end.

Ugh, I have many mixed feelings on the show. What was added new was pretty good, but it was muddled in the attempt to completely shit on the first film, and made it completely tasteless. It kind of made me hate the side characters even more, and was completely pointless. There is a reason why it is almost never a good thing for side characters to be protagonists; it adds nothing and makes things worse. In the beginning, I thought people were overreacting, but by the end of the hour and ten minutes, I am ashamed.

Characters

I am not impressed with the characters in the film. The main ones were mostly grating, the new characters were eh at best, and the side characters are pretty much irrelevant.

I was indifferent, close to disliking him in the first film, did not acre about him in the second film, but I loathe him in the third film. He takes responsibility for nothing, becomes an even bigger arrogant asshole, and when he does something wrong or ignorant, it is completely blown away. Not impressed.

Pumba was decent enough in the film, but I do not know why we got no backstory on him, but all of the focus is on Timon. Wasn’t the film supposed to be about the both of them, and their part in things? He was a supporting character at best.

She wanted the best for her son, but at the same time she could not defend his actions. I felt like she was kind of given the crap end of the stick with how she was treated, and not even acknowledged.

While Ma may have been a bit too supportive, Max was too unsupportive. An uncle is not supposed ot cheer so much when their nephew leaves, and has no faith or confidence in him. It was like he kind of wanted him to fail.

Animation

The animation is pretty decent. There are some times where I was confused whether some footage was from the original film, or reanimated for this film with the Disneytoons budget. Either way, my eyes were quite pleased at the visuals when looking at the film.

Music

Well, I cannot really bash the music, since they honestly repeated shortened versions of the music in The Lion King. They just rearranged a lot of compositions, and tweaked it to make it into something humorous is what I can, and will critique. A lot of the music in the film was devalued because of the random changes.

Reception at Release

The film was released on February 10th, 2004, and there are no reports on the financial profits gained from the film.

According to Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes, the reception was quite positive, at least compared to the other DisneyToon films. People liked the fact that it took an interesting spin on the story of the first film, and the dialogue was pretty nice.

Reception Today

From what I have heard, people do not hold it of high regard today, but some still say it is one of the better DisneyToon films. There is a lot of mixed reception regarding this film.

 

Final Score

Story: 4.5/10

Characters: 5.5/10

Animation 7/10

Music: 6.5/10

23.5/40 = 59%

Next time…

Review: January 10th, 2016

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