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| The
Lion King 1 1/2 DVD Review |
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Order this DVD from Amazon.com
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The Lion King 1 1/2
(Buena Vista Home Entertainment)
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| DVD Release Date:
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February 10, 2004
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| Length:
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77 mins.
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| Rated:
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G
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| Format:
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Widescreen (1.66:1)
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| Audio:
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DTS 5.1 Digital Surround Sound, Dolby Digital 5.1
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| Subtitles:
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Closed Captioned
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| Extras:
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"Timon: Behind The Legend" Featurette, "Before The Beginning: The Making Of The Lion King 1 1/2" Featurette, "Grazing In The Grass" Music Video, Timon & Pumbaa's Virtual Safari 1.5, "Who Wants To Be King Of The Jungle?" Trivia Game, "Find The Face" Game, Hidden Mickey Hunt, Deleted Scenes
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Last week, Roy Disney accused Disney CEO Michael Eisner of a "dozen years of 'failed ventures' and 'schemes that recycle rather than innovate.'" The release of The Lion King 1 1/2 certainly seems to support the statement.
The Lion King 1 1/2 is pretty much The Lion King told from the perspective of Timon and Pumbaa. That's not all really. Look beyond what you see, and there are a few other elements. First off, the movie is presented MST3K-style, where our friends are watching the movie in a theater and we just see their silhouettes and hear their occasional smart-mouth remarks. We start a bit before the story of the original and meet Timon and his fellow meerkats. Poor Timon is a bit of a klutz and really doesn't fit in. He's sick of being nothing more than prey, so he sets out on his own looking for worry-free living. Along the way he meets Rafiki, who introduces him to the philosophy of Hakuna Matata (aka no worries). He also meets Pumbaa. At first, he teams with our flatulent friend so that he can survive the dangers of jungle-living but eventually the two become the great friends we've come to know and love. Along their travels they stumble on a number of events depicted in the original, including the presentation of Simba, Simba and Nala's big musical number, the elephant graveyard and the wildebeest stampede. Eventually, they meet Simba, help save Pride Rock and Timon becomes a hero among the meerkats. (Thankfully, we never get into the whole "Lion King 2" thing.)
So, it's not really an original story. It may be a fun take on the original for the kids, but it isn't even close to being original, which makes me wonder why it was made in the first place. This must go back to the whole "recycle rather than innovate" idea. If I'll say anything critical it would be this - The Lion King 1 1/2 is a dumbed-down version of great movie. The humor was crude. Any originality was out the window. Simply said, the magic, for me, was gone.
For a two-disc edition, there weren't that many special features - certainly not enough to warrant a second disc. The first consists of the feature (available with both Dolby Digital and DTS tracks), some deleted scenes and a "Hidden Mickey Hunt" feature. The deleted scenes are introduced by producer George Mendoza and director Bradley Raymond. They try to be funny, but it really didn't work. The reason given for cutting a number of the scenes was because they were "too complicated". This just says to me that they are dumbing down the movie. Is this really necessary? Must they really cater to the lowest common denominator? Is this how you make movies these days? The "Hidden Mickey" feature was okay, but I wish I had known about it before I watched the first time so I didn't have to waste my time the second time around.
The second disc is divided into two sections - "Featurettes" and "Games and Activities". The first featurette is titled "Timon: Behind the Legend". Hosted by Peter Graves (of Biography fame), we learn that there is nothing behind the legend. A little funny, but not much more than that. Next, we have "Before the Beginning: The Making of Lion King 1 1/2". Here' we meet the creative behind the scenes team including animators, directors, actors, etc... Nothing too revealing here. Again, they try to be funny, but for the most part it doesn't do it for me. Surprisingly, nothing about the music. The music was probably the biggest thing about the original, and even though Elton John and Tim Rice returned for this edition, there is no mention of that anywhere here. Finally, for featurettes, there's a music video for "Grazing in the Grass" by Raven. It made me miss Hilary Duff.
Head to the "Games and Activities" section and there's a few more features. Visit "Timon and Pumbaa's Virtual Safari 1.5" and you get a cheap version of the great safari from the original DVD released late last year. I watched this one with my kids (they didn't watch the actual movie) and they kept asking "what's happening" - a question I was silently asking myself. I shut it off when one of my kids remarked that it was too scary. Next, we moved on to "Who Wants to be King of the Jungle?", a take on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" I could never get past level 7. It kinda sucked that a lot of the questions dealt with events from "Lion King 2" which I've never seen. It's odd how they dumbed-down the movie, but not the game?! Finally, there's a "Find the Face" game. Now this was dumbed-down. Basically, you are given a silhouette and you have to guess which Disney character it was. My 2 year old figured them all out - and she didn't even know 95% of the characters featured. It also sucked that the game was the exact same the second time we played it. A little variety or a bit of a challenge would have been nice.
I guess you could say that I wasn't a fan of this movie. I liked The Lion King, but this really wasn't a story I wanted to see. It wasn't necessary. Then again, maybe I've just been affected by the whole Disney controversy over the last few weeks. I've never been an Eisner booster. Frankly, I believe this movie is evidence of Disney's failure these last few years - at least from the perspective of their once mighty animation department. They just take something that was once successful and milk it for everything they can. Though the kids might enjoy the movie, as a grown-up kid, it's a sad statement about the direction of a once great magical kingdom. (Visit SaveDisney.com for more.)
| The Movie: |
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4/10 |
| The Extras: |
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4/10 |
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Liam Cullin - Editor
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