Screen
Alleva, Richard
SCREEN THE BEASTS OF SUMMER 'LION KING' & 'WOLF' T here are those who worry that The Lion King— with its on-screen murder of royal Mufasa and the guilt-tnp laid on his little son, Simba—is...
...Pfeiffer looks distracted and only James Spader entertains as the yuppie heel Did Mike Nichols call all the celebrated craftsmen and actors who worked on this film into a room just before shooting began to assure them that all their artistry wasn't going to waste on a mere horror flick7 that they were actually going to use the horror genre as a pretext to explore the primal rage that lurks under the skin of every civilized human being9 Did he then pop Robert Bly videos into the VCR and read excerpts from Jung9 Did everyone in the room fall asleep...
...They might consider Roald Dahl's The Witches and a scene in its opening pages the little hero lies trapped in the back seat of a crashed car and listens to an awful silence because both his parents he dead in the front...
...Listen, you think you can just show up and tell me how to run my life...
...If only it were Granted, there are a few mischievous bits throughout (as when Nicholson "marks his territory" by unnating on his enemy's shoes), but director Mike Nichols's languorous pacing and Guiseppe Rotunno's inappropriately serene photography dissipate the humor as well as any suspense orcreepmess...
...nurture can only tinker That is the fundamental vision of The Lion King and of all fairy tales Keep in mind the hatred of the hard-working, upwardly mobile puritans for the fairy tales that aristocratic court ladies loved to listen to and peasant grandmothers loved to tell and scholar-poets loved to collect...
...The best characterization in the movie is that of the villain, Scar, a decadent scoundrel, limp of paw and devilish in his designs Voicing Scar, Jeremy Irons repeats his performance of Claus von Bulow from Reversal of Fortune...
...But Nichols stages the whole scene as a single long shot with the two actors sitting by a nver Nicholson drones on while the river dominates the screen, our most entertaining ham actor upstaged by water...
...Not a howl, just an overly refined yawp...
...Wouldn't that make this no-nonsense female look for the nearest exit instead of making room for this weirdo in her bed9 But perhaps the scene would work if a clever choice of close and medium shots allowed the actors to show something erotic brewing beneath the words...
...In fact, much of Nichols's direction is employed in diffusing the potential drama of any given scene Take the one in which Nicholson finally wins the heart of Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays the billionaire's daughter...
...It's a rationalized Hamlet: Junior delays in avenging Pop because his murderous uncle, Scar, has made our leonine hero feel responsible for his father's death...
...The dialogue is witless enough: Pfeiffer is supposed to melt just because her suitor relates how he made spiritual contact with a wolf...
...Or they might check out The Amazing Bone by William Steig, in which the little heroine pig weeps for mercy while listening to her fox-abductor sharpen his knife in the next room "I regret having to do this to you," sighs the fox as he drags her to the kitchen table to be slaughtered, "it's nothing personal " Or perhaps they ought to peruse the Grimm tale called "The Juniper Tree " At the end of this particular review, I'll give them something to worry about But first, how good is the new Disney...
...I suppose we should be grateful that the director kept the lid on Nicholson during the expositional scenes but the trouble is, the hd never comes off...
...What's a motto...
...Goodness, in this movie, is an attribute of birth, not experience Evil, too, is inborn and utterly irredeemable (It's no use telling kids that these are animals, not humans They perceive cartoon animals as people...
...At the heart of The Lion King is a social vision that is feudal Here, the Good Life depends upon an absolutely fixed social order in which nobody can climb up or fall down without the world collapsing into anarchy Terrence Rafferty, in his very funny dismissal of The Lion King in the New Yorker, completely missed the point when he jeered that Scar's seizure of the throne can make no difference to the animals that lions eat Of course, Scar's elevation to King Predator is no revolution...
...The melodies and lyrics contain little of the fun of The Little Mermaid, little of the romance of Beauty and the Beast, and absolutely none of the wit of Aladdin When Timon the meercat sings the first few bars of that old doo-wop version of an African folk song, "in the jungle, the lion sleeps tonight," you can sense the audience perking up At last, a real song instead of that dreadful "ear candy" that Rice and John serve up' But the background score, by the reliable Hans Zimmer, has more than a whiff of the mbube style made popular in this country by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and it lends an all-too-fleetmg power to the opening and closing scenes The best song composer for Lion would have been Paul Simon working once again with Ladysmith Some of Disney's best animation ever appears in this movie The illusion of depth created goes way beyond that of all other cartoon features I've seen and conveys a sense of African spaciousness and majesty At times, the drawing delivers a sort of art appreciation course for tots the swirling lines at the bottom of a sun-baked canyon suggest Van Gogh...
...But, when Nicholson nips his betrayer, the latter turns into a rival werewolf and there is all manner of snarling and rending Satire1...
...The scriptwriters have even cobbed Irons's best line, "You have no idea ") High camp doesn't get any higher than this Now, let's give all those fretting parents out there something intense to worry about What should really bother them has nothing to do with death scenes and guilt traumas Mufasa's corpse 18 looks spotless after Scar gets him trampled by a herd of wildebeests No blood, no mangling As for Simba's psychological turmoil, no kid in the audience over five will doubt that the hero will be able to get his head straight in time for the final showdown with Scar Simba is health personified compared with Spiderman or Tim Burton's version of Batman...
...Was anyone awake during the shoot9 Wolf is an example of potentially enjoyable junk destroyed by the pseudo-seriousness of pretentious filmmaking...
...Rather, it's Scar's promotion of his underlings, the hyenas, that throws the animal kingdom into confusion and famine because the food chain gets snarled up These hyenas are villainous for being social upstarts, and Scar is doubly villainous for having betrayed not only his brother but an unalterable social order...
...But consider this...
...RICHARD alleva 20...
...But Disney's scriptwriters have crammed in jokes presumably deemed fit for kids only because they're too stale for adults...
...I dunno, wassamatta you...
...Middling, I'd say The story is swiftly told and does have a certain mythic resonance...
...My five-year-old will love the meercat Wolf is a monster movie for people who keep crystals in their homes to promote spiritual harmony It's a horror film for men who are trying to discover the warnor within, for women who yearn to run with the werewolves On a country road, a wolf bites a gentle, high-minded book editor (Jack Nicholson), and upon him a wolfish spirit descends His vision and hearing wondrously sharpen and his sex life improves...
...Will our latter-day puritans let this latest licentiousness go unpunished while wasting time in complaining about the very mild violence in this movie...
...the design created by a herd of zebras evokes pop art As usual with Disney, the comic and villainous characters are drafted with verve and wit, while the juvenile and romantic leads are cutesy-poo...
...is a line that puts us in "Bay watch" rather than in the African savannah The songs, by Tim Rice and Elton John, are miles below the level established by the last three Disney features...
...SCREEN THE BEASTS OF SUMMER 'LION KING' & 'WOLF' T here are those who worry that The Lion King— with its on-screen murder of royal Mufasa and the guilt-tnp laid on his little son, Simba—is too intense for children Have the worriers ever taken a look at the books their kids are reading...
...Legions of the politically correct, to arms1 Lynch Disney's CEO Michael Eisner' Having got all that off my chest, I now await the video of The Lion King...
...When his protege", a yuppie weasel (James Spader) steals his job and seduces his wife, Nicholson bares his fangs figuratively and, finally, literally...
...He wheels and deals ruthlessly, snacks on muggers, negotiates to yes with a billionaire, goes to bed with the nch man's daughter, and grows hair just where it belongs—on his head...
...Unleash the animal within, the filmmakers seem to be saying, and all will be well...
...There's a surfeit of witless clowning in this movie and a shortage of genuine humor As for the "serious" dialogue, it shows the pernicious influence of TV soaps...
...Nature is all...
Vol. 121 • August 1994 • No. 14
