Smith52

I've got to be honest, I have to give this a 4/5. I went into this movie expecting the worst. I loved robin Williams and felt no one could replace him. The trailers also didn't do the movie justice. That being said, this is one Disney live action remake that I can say with certainty I greatly enjoyed and will buy when it comes out on dvd. So here is a rundown of good verses bad. The bad. 1) There really isn't much wrong with this movie in my opinion. If I had to pick something wrong, I'd say the sets looked a little too much like sets. I couldn't find the town believable because of just how staged everything looked. The Good 1) The story. Aladdin was mostly a copy of the animated version, but with enough changes to make it a different story. I loved that they took care of a few plot holes from the animated version as well as updated some things with the times to appeal to a wider audience. 2) the costumes were amazing. I especially loved Jasmine's different outfits. 3) The singing. I can't even begin to say just how amazing the singing was in this movie. When I watched the short clip of "Prince Ali," I was terrified. It appears this was unfounded. While not the best song in the movie, it didn't come close to being bad either. Aladdin's voice actor was perhaps having the most difficultly with singing, but he was still good in what he did. Naomi. I had no idea that she was such a powerhouse vocally. Her voice was absolutely incredible. The same can be said of Will's voice. When the intro song started up, I got chills down my spine from how good his vocals were in it. 4) The Cast. As stated before, I had some worries about Will Smith taking over the part of Genie. I was wrong to feel that way. He made Genie his own and knocked it out of the park with his performance. Like Robin was in the animated version, Will made Genie the most entertaining character and I got a lot of good laughs from him. I was also very pleased with the actors chosen for the other lead roles and they all worked perfectly. Aladdin's clumsy attempts at being a prince made him more endearing and Jasmine being a more proactive character made my inner warrior woman come out. This movie is a must see for certain. Rarely do I like live action remakes of animated movies, but I can admit when I'm wrong. Aladdin was well worth the watch and rewatching.

Lion King 2/5 Oh this one hurts me a lot to say. Alladin was a fantastic remake, but some movies just can't be translated well to realism. Lion king is one of those movies. First I will start with the good. 1) I was very worried about the voice acting for scar because Jeremy felt irreplaceable. That being said, I felt the voice actor we had for Scar was incredible and felt very intimidating. 2) the visuals. This works as both a positive and a negative. The animation is top notch in its realism and it's all beautiful. I give major props to the animation team on this because I know they out a lot of work into making the lions, the landscape, and all the animals as real as possible. 3) I absolutely loved the child voice actors for Simba and Nala. The voices for them perfectly and they both had great chemistry when singing together. This is where I get into the negatives and boy are there a lot of them. I will avoid listing ones that contain spoilers. 1) The music. What happened to Scar's villian song? Some of the songs didn't make it into the movie. One particular song was sung at a time that didn't make sense to sing it. 2) The visuals. The downside of such stunning realism is that it majorly detracts from what makes us care about the characters. Emotions are hard to convey on realistic animal faces and so it is up to the voice actors to put as much emotion as they can into their voices. Hearing a lot of emotion and seeing almost none makes the characters unrelatable and I found I didn't care about any of them. 3) Another area where the visuals suffered in this fill by having too much realism is that it is oftentimes near impossible to tell the lions apart. The lionesses were the worst, with it being impossible to tell who was who until someone started talking. With the animated version, minor, but distinct characteristics made telling them apart much easier. Scar and Simba were well enough apart visually to tell a difference until the final showdown. I had a bit of trouble in that part. 4) Certain voice acting. As stated above, I enjoyed the voice actors of young Nala, young Simba, and Scar. I also enjoyed James reprising his role as Mufasa. That being said, his performance felt different here. His lines had less emotion and power behind them than before and I'm unsure why that was. While I am a huge fan of Beyonce as a singer and actually loved her duet in the movie, I found myself constantly distracting when she spoke. I couldn't get immersed into Nala as a character because all I heard was Beyonce speaking. This isn't her fault of course. She has a very distinct and powerful voice, but in this case, it was just very distracting. All in all, it was a decent, if unnecesary movie. I wanted so badly to like this movie. They had everything going for them. They had an amazing cast and animation department, but the movie still felt like an empty shell of its predecessor. Rarely have I left a theater and thought that a movie was a one and done deal for me, but I honestly don't see myself seeing it again.