WANNA KNOW HOW HE GOT THOSE SCARS? Mufasa: The Lion King (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) prequelifies the Lion King franchise by regaling us with the origin story of its title mane-bearer, although he’s not the most dynamic character in the saga. We all know Mufasa’s destined to unite the pridelands under his benevolent paw, but it’s his brother who tussles with the inner turmoil that makes a fella more, y’know, compelling. Yet Scar: The Lion Knave probably wouldn’t have earned $688 million in ticket sales, and we’re all too aware that Disney doesn’t have an “artistic value” column on its accounting spreadsheet. So Mufasa it is, a film that adopts the ultra-photorealistic CG of the 2019 Lion King when most of humanity would likely prefer it to be 2D-animated like the 1994 original, but alas. Interestingly, Mufasa director Barry Jenkins jumps from Oscar fodder Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk to a mega-tentpole that makes sense in light of The Brutalist director Brady Corbet’s recent revelation (via Marc Maron’s podcast) that many directors on the Oscar-promo trail are hardscrabblers making doodily-squat for money. Which leaves us left to determine if this movie is more than the sum of the many financial decisions that facilitated its making.
The Gist: The first rule of Lion King movies is, thou shan’t make a Lion King movie without Timon and Pumbaa. Of course, time and the Circle of Life and all that dictate that they weren’t alive when Mufasa was young, so the writers get to contrivin’, couching this grand origin story within a flashback narrative where wise old baboon Rafiki (John Kani) recounts the tale to Mufasa’s grandchild/Simba’s daughter Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter) while non-gay life-partners Timon (Billy Eichner) the wiseass meerkat and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) the farting warthog listen in, occasionally chipping in with high-larious commentary. And every time the saga builds up some narrative momentum, it jumps back to these chatterboxes, forcing everyone to saddle back up and un-derail the train multiple times. The things they do to maintain the constancy of ticket and merchandise sales, eh?
So, back however many years, Mufasa was a cub (Braelyn and Brielle Rankins), romping with his parents on a quest to find the fabled land of Milele, where peace and prosperity thrive among all animals, at least until some of the carnivores get hungry. A flash flood at the water hole separates Mufasa from his mom and dad, and he’s saved from drowning by a fellow cub named Taka (Theo Somolu), whose father Obasi (Lennie James) is the king of this patch of land. To put it bluntly, Obasi is a dick. He’s prejudiced against “strays” like Mufasa, a commoner who doesn’t belong among such royalty, but the queen around these here parts, Eshe (Thandiwe Newton), intercedes and adopts the orphan. Taka is grateful to have a brother-buddy, for now at least, because things like jealousy, beta-male genetics and Obasi’s terrible-ass advice (“Deceit is a tool of a great king”) will eventually prompt his transformation into Evil Cringer. So it goes.
Years go by. Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) have patchy manes growing in, which I think means they’re teenagers who’ve hit puberty. An angry batch of white-furred lions, dubbed the Outsiders and led by Kiros (Mads Mikkelson), attacks Obasi’s grossly outnumbered pride, and apparently slaughters them off-screen. Mufasa and Taka escape, and in lieu of a better plan, set out for Milele, wherever the heck that is. They gather some allies in the lioness Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) and her goofy bird pal Zazu (Preston Nyman), as well as, eventually, a young Rafiki, who thankfully knows where he’s going. And they’d better go quickly and cover their tracks, because the Outsiders are trailing them. Meanwhile, a love triangle forms among Mufasa, Taka and Sarabi (puberty confirmed!), and you tell me which dude the lady might prefer: the strong, confident lion or the cowardly, uncertain and, eventually, scheming one? I’m not gonna say which is which. No spoilers, pal!
Oh, and by the way, there’s been singing and dancing this whole time.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Among Disney’s far-too-many cynically calculated live-action remakes of classic cartoons, only Cinderella and The Jungle Book have any real creative agency – and the latter is the closest comparison to Mufasa due to their hyper-realistic portrayal of talking fauna. Thanks to director Jon Favreau’s injection of intensity and dramatic stakes into The Jungle Book, it mostly dodged its status as a crass cash-grab and almost made us forget that we were watching the same old story over again. Almost.
Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Rafiki is the endearing goofus around here, so recognition belongs to Kani, who delivers lines like “A flea can trouble a lion more than a lion can trouble a flea” with welcome eccentricity.
Memorable Dialogue: Sarabi smells the pheromones: “I see you, Mufasa… Smart as you are, you have a way of seeing everything but yourself.”
Sex and Skin: Nah.
Our Take: We’ve come a long way since Babe, haven’t we? And that’s unfortunate, in light of Mufasa. Watching a photorealistic CG lion cough like a human is a bit too through-the-looking-glass, crash-landed-in-the-uncanny-valley for me, thanks. Real cats “cough” like they’re trying to dry-wheeze a crusty hairball through a narrow juice box straw (and I would know, having had more than a few cats). Perhaps the anthropomorphized croup is a side effect of having human intelligence and speech capabilities; perhaps this movie, and the one before it, should look more like a cartoon than a f—ing nature documentary. One of Rifiki’s funnier lines goes, “My eyes are open – it’s my LIDS that are closed,” and I often wanted to close my own lids as this antiseptic portrayal of the cleanest, crispest, most boringly lovely savanna flickered in front of me.
To be fair, Mufasa’s visuals are objectively beautiful, full of detail and exquisitely rendered color and lighting – the work of many highly skilled animators blue-pilled by Disney to spend hour upon hour deepfaking a National Geographic spread. It’s the encyclopedia definition of craft eclipsing art. And Disney spent $200 million to make this show-off aesthetic a reality. Frankly, they should’ve spent $800 million, so they could maintain visual accuracy down to a submolecular level. We’d really be impressed then!
Beyond the antiseptic visuals that render Pumbaa’s every wiry hair with disgusting veracity, the movie is underwhelming, slightly less than just-fine. Interest quickly wanes as the story chugs along with tedious determination and inevitability, eventually confirming Mufasa’s selflessness and Scar/Taka’s spinelessness without much complication. Too many plot conflicts can be summed up as “strategic differences.” Action set pieces center around familiar stampedes and rushing waters. The love story between Mufasa and Sarabi, tangled with Taka’s feelings of betrayal, feels noncommittal and perfunctory. A potentially rousing climax with big roars, mighty showdowns and Mufasa’s Braveheart battle-rally speech (doubling as an unwitting political stump speech) mostly just fizzles out, and bends over backward to depict The Origin of Pride Rock. Everything is underscored with a feeling not of urgency, but obligation to a franchise and its bottom line.
Oh, and they were singing medium-catchy songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda the whole time.
Our Call: SKIP IT. My enthusiasm for Mufasa was initially low, and it’s only waned with further pondering of its ones-and-zeroes visual non-wizardry and borderline-pointless story. Some of you will just have to see it, and my advice for you is, spend as little money as possible to do so.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.