The Lion King

'The Lion King' is probably one of the most famous, well-known and highly-commended films to date. About a king of beasts, Mufasa, who has a son, Simba, much to the disgust of Mufasa's brother, Scar, who wishes to be king, is a pretty solid tale of trickery, power and despair.

The film boasts everything you'd want. Decent storyline, impressive art style, awesome soundtrack and a whole herd of lovable characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, such as Timone the meerkat, Pumbaa the warthog and Ed the hyena, not to mention a great script and effective sense of humour. That's not to say that 'The Lion King' is the perfect film. Sometimes one could accuse the plot of droning on a bit, and when the final battle is so insignificant, you know there's something wrong.

Still, what's a little lack of action and utter intrigue when the African setting and animal characters offer some sweet adventure elements. These adventures, such as when the hyena chase Simba and Nala through the elephant graveyard, a similar event in the gorge and Simba's new lifestyle of Hakuna Matata are quite honestly my highlights to the film, and you can see that so much effort has gone into the design of these scenes and locations, a quality which is distinct and constant throughout the entire film.

A lot of the time, soundtrack can be painfully annoying, like when songs are inconveniently added and the film suffers from this. 'The Lion King' is a proud exception. Try as you might, it's difficult to deny the excellence of the soundtrack. There aren't so many songs that you could accuse 'The Lion King' of being a mere musical, but there are enough tunes in here to make you want to purchase the soundtrack. As far as I can remember, there are five proper songs, 'The Circle Of Life', 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King', 'Be Prepared', 'Hakuna Matata' and 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight', with a few more minor additions for humourous effect (take Timone's and Pumbaa's distraction plan, for instance).

'The Lion King' can occasionally seem like a tiresome and desperate lust for your attention, although these tedious sections are very few in quantity and very barely affect the quality. An enticing art style, lovable characters and songs and decent adventure scenes, with great script and comedy are surely enough to make up for these minor setbacks.

Four Out Of Five.