Nostalgia carries The Lion King to mediocrity

Simba (voiced by JD McCrary) in The Lion King. Image courtesy Disney.

Whatever artistic purpose exists in converting classic Disney animated films into the husk of brilliance remains well beyond my understanding. Take The Lion King, Disney's newest reboot, a film that largely copies the original a la Psycho 1998 and yet has very little substance to add to its template. All of these Disney reboots exist for profit, but The Lion King is a rather egregious attempt to feed off nostalgia.

The movie has effectively the same plot as the 1994 original. Simba, voiced as a cub by JD McCrary and as an adult by Donald Glover, is stuck in the middle of a power play between his father Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and scheming uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) for control of Pride Rock, which his father loses in rather dramatic fashion. Cast out of the kingdom, Simba is taken in by snarky meerkat Timon (Billy Eichner, a step up from Nathan Lane) and sweet warthog Pumba (Seth Rogen), who teach Simba to let go of the past and enjoy today. That's easier said than done though, especially after childhood friend Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph as a cub and Beyonce as an adult) asks him to return to reclaim the throne and live up to his father's legacy. Joined by faithful servant Zazu (John Oliver), the wise Rafiki (John Kani) and his mother Sarabi (Alfre Woodard), Simba returns to battle Scar, hyena leader Shenzi (Florence Kasumba) and her army of hyenas (Keegan-Michael Key and Eric André among them) for control of the kingdom.

The biggest compliment to offer this new Lion King is also the root cause of one of its biggest flaws. This is a legitimately good looking film, from the lush scenery to the impressive CGI that does a phenomenal job making the animals look fairly authentic. Yet the CGI is a major weakness for The Lion King because the conversion from animation to realistic CGI removes a lot of the film's charisma. By aiming for verisimilitude with the lions, elephants, hyenas, and multitude of critters, the characters lose much of their personality because they can't emote. Take a character like Zazu, who is memorable in large part because his animated facial expressions enhance the wry dialog delivered by Rowan Atkinson. Poor Oliver is stuck voicing a literal bird, which puts the onus on his vocal abilities to carry the character and removes a layer of uniqueness from the character. Even the musical numbers are dinged by this; because the animals are supposed to be “real”, director Jon Favreau can't stage the elaborate musical numbers that highlighted the original. What's left is outright boring musical numbers that exist in a faux reality, which runs counter to a genre defined by its flights of fancy.

The Lion King is ill served by the transition to a real-life setting, which is one of the few real methods it attempts to distinguish itself from the 1994 version given how many shots this version borrows. Favreau does have a little wiggle room though, interpreting minor scenes to make subtle, often deleterious, changes to the source content. One example worth highlighting is transporting Can You Feel the Love Tonight in the middle of the afternoon, dulling a lot of the romanticism of the moment. To be fair, some of the tweaks work pretty well – an indulgent Disney reference in the third act is an improvement over the scenario from the original – but most of the tweaks do not benefit the film. Where Favreau and writer Jeff Nathanson, and by extension The Lion King, have control is in the approximately 30 minutes of extra run time. One of the main target areas is the development of the female characters, which is hit or miss. Having Senzi lead the Hyenas instead of serving as a Stooge is a step up, resulting in a pretty nice payoff during Scar's demise. The film is less effective with Nala, giving her a couple extra scenes that try to add courage to a character that was already pretty courageous. Favreau and Nathanson simply don't do enough with the extra time to justify having it, and the added time hurts the narrative flow while stagnating the musical numbers.

The one benefit of adapting The Lion King is the quality of the source material. The original is so good the ersatz version can't be all bad. Playing it safe saved the film from being anything less than mediocre, but it prevents it from achieving anything much greater than that. And without any interest in exploring the text, the film lacks an artistic reason to exist. The point is purely profit, and it makes for an uninteresting movie.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

 

Rating: PG

Run time: 118 minutes

Genre: Drama

tl;dr

What Worked: Billy Eichner, James Earl Jones

What Fell Short: Extended Run Time, Live Action Setting, Musical Numbers

What To Watch Instead: The Lion King

Dr. Strange a problematic, effective head trip

Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange in Dr. Strange. Image courtesy Disney.

It's clear the folks behind the Marvel film series have a some sort of plan as to how they want to build up toward the Infinity War mayhem come 2018. And while it is difficult to argue with the success of their plan given the positive reviews and monetary returns the films have received, the existence of a Dr. Strange film always stuck out as a particularly odd note. Of all the characters for the company to introduce, was Stephen Strange really that far ahead of Black Panther, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, or the cavalcade of other diverse characters riding deep within the company's pockets? And was it necessary to introduce Stephen Strange through his own film while continuing to neglect Black Widow, a frequent source of untapped potential within the Marvel cinematic universe?

The answer is yes and no, at least in the sense of his necessity not to the continuity to the universe, but to the differentiation of the company's otherwise cookie cutter approach to its superhero franchise. Dr. Strange is Marvel's head trip, the experimental, trippy adventure designed to explore regions the company has yet to reach out to thus far. Marvel needs Dr. Strange as a film, and as a character, to add a new dimension to its repertoire. The film is a go at a shot in the arm for the company to mix things up a little bit and step away from the more staid adventures of Thor, the overused Iron Man and Captain America. Dr. Strange is Marvel doing something a little different than what they've had before, although the film itself isn't really that far away from what the company has done for the last decade.

There's nothing inherently inventive about Dr. Strange's narrative. It's a pretty basic origin story featuring Benedict Cumberbatch – copying Robert Downey Junior's swagger and lifting Hugh Laurie's American accent – as the titular doctor rendered useless due to an ego-inflicted auto accident and forced to cure himself through Eastern mysticism. His quest places him smack dab in the middle of a mystical war between Tilda Swinton's Ancient One and a rogue warlock named Kaecilius (played by Mads Mikkelsen). Dr. Strange has a large amount of Iron Man in its DNA, with Strange and Tony Stark each serving as solipsistic geniuses who must reluctantly learn some degree of modesty to reach their true potential. Additional elements, including the potential romantic partner on the periphery (in this case a very wasted Rachel McAdams), a black best friend (Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo) and a loose comedic underpinning that has become something of a hallmark for these films also crop up.

What separates Dr. Strange from Iron Man, Avengers and the rest of the Marvel slate is its visual experimentation. This is a film carried thoroughly by its special effects, from the Inception inspired building folds to some trip Stephen Strange through the mind, dimensions, time and beyond, making it resemble at times a very expensive art film befitting the character. This is the reason why Marvel needed a film like Dr. Strange to move away from the action laden flicks of the past couple of years to something a little more opaque. Marvel needed this idea to work, and the visuals at least come close to justifying a Dr. Strange film.

But Stephen Strange has a few underlying issues as a comic book hero that come creeping up in the film, no matter how hard Marvel and Disney try to scrub it away. The very nature of Strange's character arc involves cultural reappropriation, using the exotic concept of Eastern religion to strengthen a white character that reduces Eastern culture into a stereotypical concept and exists just to make the white male character look better by comparison. At issue too is the casting of Swinton as The Ancient One, in which a lily white woman replaces an older Asian male. While there is indeed an argument to be made for avoiding certain stereotypes related to the aforementioned culture problem, the film still replaces a minority character with a white one, which brings up a whole slew of issues of its own.

All of this makes Dr. Strange a funky step for Marvel to take in its world construction. There is a need for someone like Stephen Strange in the company's current roster, and the aesthetics of the film offer some balance to everything else. Yet the character trappings ultimately diminish what is, by concept, a pretty interesting film. It marks a step forward and a step backward for Marvel, with the hope the backward step is not a prelude of what to expect over the next three years.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 115 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Anyone who has watched a Marvel film since Iron Man.

Take the whole family?: There's nothing overly objectionable content wise, although the film could bother little kids do to some of its graphics along with a couple of swears.

Theater or Netflix?: You'll probably go see it, so if you do pay for the matinee.

What other Marvel characters deserve their own films?: I've vouched for Black Widow and Quasar before, but Marvel could do a fair amount with She-Hulk as a more intelligent, controlled Hulk and Ms. Marvel. It’d be fascinating to see a Squirrel Girl film too, which, if based on the current iteration of the character, would be focused on goofy adventures and a push away from violence.

Watch this as well?: Guardians of the Galaxy, the first Avengers and Winter Soldier remain the cream of the crop of the Marvel films. You could also hit up Inception and 2001: A Space Odyssey to see Dr. Strange's visual influencers.

Blurring the thin blue line

Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins Jr. in "Triple 9." Image courtesy Open Road Films

Most of my time watching the almost entirely forgettable “Triple 9” was spent thinking about the many other better movies I could be watching at the moment. “Deadpool,” after all, was just a theater away, or I could have gone home and put on “Rififi” or “Dog Day Afternoon.” I sat through “Triple 9” anyway, waiting for something unique or noteworthy to occur and hoping beyond hope this thing could contribute something more to society than contrivances, racism and Aaron Paul doing crack once again.

That moment never came though, largely due to a plot dreamed up by a bored Homer Simpson and written by an overeager freshman film major. “Triple 9” opens with a successful bank robbery – because it's always a bank robbery – perpetrated by Paul, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clifton Collins Jr., Norman Reedus and Anthony Mackie. The big twist? Everybody except Paul and Ejiofor are cops for the Atlanta Police Department pulling the job for Russian mob boss Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet pulling out an atrocious Russian accent from a secondary orifice) who happens to be the sister of Ejiofor's ex (Gal Gadot). One job isn't enough though, and the crew is recruited for another heist that will free Winslet's husband from the Gulag or something like that. (It was tough to tell because the dialogue was in Russian and the subtitles were cutoff on the bottom of the screen.) This new job is difficult, as robbing from a Homeland Security building will draw lots of unwanted attention.

Unless, that is, someone kills a cop – a titular code 999 – which will distract every officer in the area. And who better to murder than Mackie's new annoying partner Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), nephew of daffy but well-regarded investigator Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson), who happens to be investigating that first heist. Mackie and company come up with a plan to slaughter Affleck for their own means, but the best laid plans in such films never work out so well, and things start to fall apart from there amid shenanigans involving Latino gangs, booze and women filled with malice.

In other words, pretty much the general plot of most heist films stuffed into less than two hours of run time, even though director John Hillcoat and writer Matt Cook clearly need more time to establish characters and coordinate plot machinations. “Triple 9” is far too short for it's ambitions – it feels like someone slashed off 15 minutes or so indiscriminately – although it still somehow lasts too long after the second heist when all the loose ends have to be wrapped up. One of the worst places a film can be is in that zone of being too long and too short, and “Triple 9” finds itself right smack dab in the middle of the dull zone. Then again, a longer film would mean having to watch even more of “Triple 9,” which isn't a very exciting proposition. It's not a visually stunning movie nor a particularly well executed one when it comes to its action sequences, most of which are filmed in a workmanlike fashion with little to no ownership. Even the moments theoretically meant to invoke suspense come off as funny and light instead of serious; the audience literally laughed at what was clearly the point of greatest tension of the entire movie.

None of this would be overly bothersome; forgettable films come and go like the tides or the next great presidential candidate. What makes “Triple 9” stand out though is a discomfiting vein of racism directed toward its Hispanic characters. Hillcoat and Cook go out of their way to establish a backstory for just about every character to offer some justification for their actions; it’s the main reasons why the plot is so overstuffed. Ejiofor has a kid he's trying to see again, Mackie is torn between loyalty to his partner and his comrades, and Paul is mourning for much of the film. Clifton, the lone Hispanic member of this group, is a remorseless killer though, a very bad man whose motivations are rooted solely in dollars and self preservation. He's an extension of the way the filmmakers portray the Hispanic community, a group that in this film is violent, uneducated, crude, cruel, slightly atavistic, and borderline subhuman. “Triple 9” is a film built to justify white people's fear of Hispanic communities, which is such a weird angle for a film otherwise devoted to themes of loyalty and moral quagmires.

It's that aspect that shoves “Triple 9” into the problematic realm, a film unwilling to shake clichés both damaging and useless because they might look cool. It tries ever so hard to be smart, to be a head spinner on par with a Tony Gilroy flick. But as “Triple 9” proves, trying too hard to be smart really makes you look pretty dumb.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 115 minutes (One hour and 55 minutes)

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: People who want an unnecessarily convoluted cop flick.

Take the whole family?: A ton of dudes get shot in the head in this one, so stick with the rating suggestion and send your kids to “Zootopia” next week.

Theater or Netflix?: Stream it.

Who do you want to win the Academy Awards?: Brie Larson for “Room” and Rooney Mara for “Carol” would be terrific choices for Best Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively. On the male side, Leonardo DiCaprio is the best choice from the options granted, while I'd really like Mark Ruffalo to win for “Spotlight.” If I had my druthers, George Miller would win for directing and “Mad Max: Fury Road” for Best Picture, although neither will probably occur.

Watch this instead?: Considering “Triple 9” tries to be a cop film and a heist film, recommending from both genres makes sense. Both “Bad Lieutenant” and “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” are fascinating films for the former category, while “Inside Job” (also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor) and “Asphalt Jungle” are terrific heist films.