Review: Unnecessary ‘Mufasa’ shows the Lion King franchise to be running out of lives
LA TimesBarry Jenkins signing on to direct a spinoff to “The Lion King” sounds like a joke you’d crack after “Moonlight” won the Oscar for best picture, less at the filmmaker’s expense than at an industry that’s gotten cagey about funding his kind of heart-driven talent. “Mufasa: The Lion King,” from a script by Jeff Nathanson, has taken up a substantial amount of Jenkins’ bandwidth — it was first announced in 2020. Rafiki recounts the origin story of Kiara’s grandfather while, at a cadence that ticks like a nervous executive’s pacemaker, Pumbaa and Timon interrupt for atonal comic relief: “Less childhood trauma, more meerkat!” Timon wails. Mufasa and most of the other lions sound like theme-park animatronics with voices set to “Soothe.” Adding to the homogeneity, the core characters — and I’m referring to a half-dozen-plus beasts here — share the same backstory: They miss their families.