Real-looking lions, same old story

Disney's new version of The Lion King has its moments, but too often fails to thrill.

By now, The Lion King has gone far beyond being a much-loved 1994 animated movie from Disney. The celebrated King rules a brand-like realm of abundant profits -- in the form of a long-running Broadway musical, numerous touring productions and loads of international recognition.

Is there a person on the planet who hasn't uttered, either in seriousness or derision, the words "Hakuna Matata?” Who hasn't felt the manufactured awe that stems from hearing the lyrics to "The Circle of Life?"

Now comes Disney's eagerly awaited computer-animated version of The Lion King, which has been made to look as if real lions are living the story of Simba, the lion who wrestles with guilt over his father's death, flees the Pride Lands and eventually returns to assume his rightful place on the throne. (Spoilers, I suppose, but who doesn't already know the story.)

Directed by Jon Favreau, who also directed the "live-action" version of Disney's The Jungle Book (2016), Lion King 2019 seems bound for box-office glory no matter what nay-saying critics think.

Me? I had a mixed reaction to the new edition. To begin with, the movie qualifies as something of a techno-curiosity. Disney's team of specialists has created a world in which (save for being able to speak English) the lions attain a level of faux realism (yes, it's a contradiction) that's striking.

Watching the beasts of Lion King feels a bit like something you might experience at a theme park that has been designed to simulate the feeling of traveling across an African savanna. No passports or inoculations required.

But there's a downside to this approach. The animals move their mouths when they speak but their faces aren't as free to express emotion as they would have been had they been drawn.

And all of the movie's animal characters romp across landscapes that also are rendered with keen realism. It's all supposed to look like "live-action."

For the most part, Favreau and his team follow the original story, so much so that some have criticized the movie for lacking freshness. But Favreau was in a no-win situation when it came to the story: Had he provided wholesale changes, he probably would have been criticized for tampering with a classic.

In trying to contain the story within clearly recognizable boundaries, Favreau has subjected himself to the opposite charge: The movie, some say, is a grandiose act of mimicry.

Audiences, I suppose, will fall on either side of the fence or won’t care at all.

The vocal talent in this edition acquits itself well: Donald Glover, as Simba; Chiwetel Ejiofor as the evil Scar, James Earl Jones, as the fallen King, Mufasa.

Alfre Woodard provides the voice for Sarabi, Simba's mother, and Beyonce gives voice to Nala, the lioness who will become Simba's bride. John Oliver adds flavor as the voice of Zazu, King Mufasa's right-paw bird.

The film springs to its most vivid life when it’s being silly, especially when Billy Eichner (as Timon) and Seth Rogen (as Pumbaa) show up. The meerkat and warthog team provide laughs and an energy boost for a movie that can feel overly solemn, particularly when the story travels to a forbidden elephant graveyard.

Using realistic-looking animals for fights may shake smaller children, although these days I'm at a loss when it comes to understanding what level of mayhem little ones are able to tolerate. The many snarling hyenas that Scar recruits as henchmen in his plot to rule can be equally scary.

Speaking of Scar, the villain of the piece looks mangy and undernourished, a creature more in need of animal rescue than a throne that satisfies his greed, hunger, and ambition.

Some of the famous musical numbers survive but don't always make much of an impact. I guess the filmmakers thought that audiences are familiar enough with these songs immediately to grasp their significance.

And, yes, the cub Simba is cute enough to win over even the hardest of hearts.

This edition of Lion King should keep the turnstiles spinning, even if its sense of discovery stems mostly from the ways in which everything has been so sharply realized. If you wanted to push the point, you could say that the whimsy of animation has fallen prey to the sharpened incisors of technical achievement.

Still, I said my reaction was mixed and I’m not changing my mind: The story's appeal remains — even if this Lion King doesn’t always thrill.

Spider-Man takes a European vacation

Can Peter Parker grow beyond his Queens neighborhood? Far From Home answers the question in passable fashion.

Whatever emotional kick you’ll find in Spider-Man: Far From Home comes from Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. Don't get me wrong. Downey’s character isn't present. But Iron Man’s absence adds poignancy to a story in which 16-year-old Peter Parker wonders whether he’s capable of filling Iron Man’s shoes.

Riding the emotional wave that Marvel set off in Avengers: End Game, Spider-Man: Far From Home turns out to be a serviceable entry into the Marvel repertoire: a collection of less-than-impressively realized action, a surfeit of good-natured humor, and an appealing young cast headed by stand-out Tom Holland as Spider-Man.

This edition takes Spider-Man abroad. Peter Parker (Holland) joins his high-school class on a trip to Europe. Stops include Venice, Prague, and London as the story hop-scotches across cities that are threatened with destruction by creatures called Elementals: i.e., earth, water, and fire monsters that wreak havoc. Can any Marvel movie be considered complete without reducing some part of a major city to rubble?

In this edition, Spider-Man's classmates graduate to slightly larger roles. Zendaya portrays MJ, the girl who has stolen Peter Parker’s heart. Jacob Batalon plays Ned, Peter's best friend, a nerdy kid who this times winds up with a girlfriend (Angourie Rice).

Marisa Tomei returns as Aunt May; Jon Favreau appears as Happy, Tony Stark's former bodyguard and chauffeur; and Samuel L. Jackson, looking less than enthusiastic, reprises his role as Nick Fury, the head of the outfit that runs the Avengers.

Added to the mix is Mysterio, a superhero portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal. Mysterio wears a helmet that looks like a some dropped a fishbowl on his head; he also has an alter ego. Out of uniform, he's Quentin Beck.

Super-sensitive about spoilers, Columbia Pictures has encouraged critics not to ruin the movie’s surprises. I won’t say more, except to note that not all of them have the hoped-for kick.

Holland works hard to be the energetic and conflicted, the not entirely mature Spider-Man that we’ve come to expect, and, yes, his naïveté and sincerity prove engaging.

All in all, this edition of Spider-Man is not only far from home, but it’s also far from being a disaster. Far From Home unfolds without giving offense or ascending into the upper ranks of Marvel's unending list of movies. Put another way: Far From Home passes muster.

But, know this, as well, Far From Home hardly lays a glove on the much more imaginative, Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, 2019’s Oscar winner for best-animated feature.

Disney scores with another 'Jungle Book'

CGI animals and a strong voice cast help director Jon Favreau sell a familiar tale.

Adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book don't exactly make for fresh news. So when I first saw the title on a list of 2016 releases, I found it difficult to get excited about another jungle journey, even one equipped with a CGI menagerie.

As it turns out, Disney's Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, is bright (even in 3D), appealing and in at least one inspired sequence, engagingly loopy.

The story focuses on Mowgli (Neel Sethi), a boy who was raised by wolves and suddenly finds himself targeted by a tiger named Shere Kahn (voiced by Idris Elba).

The story is narrated by Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), the sagacious panther who first brought young Mowgli to Raksha (Lupita Nyong'o), the wolf who becomes his surrogate mother and who tries to instill him with the lore of the pack.

Elba gives voice to a convincing villain, a somewhat battered tiger who's motivated by a desire to keep fire out of the jungle. Shere Khan thinks it's not enough to exile Mowgli from the jungle by returning him to his human tribe. He wants to kill the boy.

In the early going, I half wondered whether Mowgli's flight through the jungle hadn't given Disney an excuse to produce a kiddie version of The Revenant, another wilderness survival epic. But Favreau balances the movie's convincingly dangerous situations with enough comic moments to keep fright in check.

To insure the success of its effort, Disney has surrounded first-timer Sethi with a strong voice cast. In addition to Kinglsey and Elba, you'll recognize Bill Murray as the voice of the conniving but good-spirited Baloo, a bear with a honey jones.

The movie even breaks into song with a Murray-voiced rendition of The Bare Necessities, which was used in Disney's 1967 animated version of The Jungle Book. The song seems awkwardly inserted because this version of Jungle Book isn't really a musical, but once you get past its slightly jarring arrival, the song is sort of fun.

Even though we never see him, Christopher Walken does scene-stealing work as the voice of King Louie, a giant orangutan with evil on his mind.

Louie wants Mowglie -- referred to by the animals as a "man cub" -- to return to his own kind, capture fire and deliver it to the power-hungry king who lives in an impressively created temple that has been overrun by all manner of monkeys.

Walken, too, is given a musical number, I Wanna Be Like You.

Animal purists may find this entirely anthropomorphic endeavor to be a little prone to cuteness. Despite Favreau's amazingly skillful use of CGI, the movie's spirit often follows a cartoon template with creatures (wolf cubs, for example) that are petting-zoo cuddly.

Although the movie expresses deep reverence for elephants -- all creatures bow before them -- it also makes sure to find a way to put a baby elephant into danger, an incident that provides the movie with an opportunity to showcase the human ingenuity that Mowgli possesses.

But there are also strangely alluring creatures that aren't quite as kid friendly: Ka, a giant snake voiced by Scarlett Johansson, tries to tempt Mowgli with her hypnotically seductive voice.

Favreau paces the movie at a speed that tends to help push criticism aside. Panthers with British accents? Why is it that some of the animals talk and some don't? And, most importantly, concerns about whether some of the realistically presented animal fights are too vivid for the youngest viewers to handle. The movie has been rated PG.

Overall, though, The Jungle Book proves entertaining and likable without delivering too heavy-handed a message about the way humans, the masters of fire, tend to destroy jungle habitats.

Stay put for the end credits, which are entertaining in their own right.

'Chef' cooks up a good time

Jon Favreau's new comedy builds a father/son story around food.

In his new movie Chef, Jon Favreau plays a Los Angeles chef who's creatively stifled. Favreau's Carl Casper runs the kitchen at a successful restaurant, but no longer finds the menu challenging.

When Carl learns that a prominent food critic plans a visit, he decides it's time to show off the innovative skills that established his reputation when he worked in Miami.

Unfortunately the restaurant's owner (Dustin Hoffman) wants to stick to tried-and-true fare, giving customers what they seem to want.

It's not surprising that the city's most important reviewer (Oliver Platt) condemns Carl for having squandered his creative mojo.

Favreau also tosses Carl's personal information into the movie's frying pan. Carl's ex-wife (Sofia Vergara) might be the most supportive former wife ever: She's always trying to help him. Carl also has a young son (Emjay Anthony) with whom he spends insufficient time.

After losing his job and humiliating himself in a public confrontation with the antagonistic critic, Casper decides to return to Miami and ask a favor from his ex-wife's condescending first husband (Robert Downey Jr.)

Downey's character gives Carl a dilapidated food truck. Carl decides to spruce it up, and sell Cuban sandwiches. This back-to-basics move is designed to accomplish two things: It will revive Carl's foundering career and re-establish his relationship with his son.

The boy accompanies Carl and one of his former employees (John Leguizamo) on the cross-country trip back to Los Angeles. Food movie suddenly becomes road movie.

Chef is one of those movies that should be avoided if you're hungry. Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau makes sure that the movie's food looks scrumptious and, when appropriate sumptuous.

Favreau, who directs and who also wrote the screenplay, tempers an obvious feel-good spirit by keeping Carl from becoming entirely likable. He's a malcontent who doesn't know how to be happy, despite the fact that he receives encouragement from co-workers (Scarlett Johansson and Bobby Cannavale in small roles). He's a mass of irritations.

To achieve happiness, Carl must learn to balance his career and personal life. He must discover how to turn his life into a kind of on-going party with great food, an objective that's bolstered by the movie's soundtrack which has been seasoned with sounds from Cuba and New Orleans -- with dashes of R&B added for good measure.

Once the movie hits the road, it tends to drag a little, substituting travelogue and color for story momentum. Before the movie hit the three-quarter mark of its 115-minute length, I was ready for a bit of short-order editing.

Favreau came to prominence with the indie movie Swingers (1999), which he wrote and in which he acted. Because he also has directed big commercial movies such as Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Elf, he's received lots of praise for returning to his roots with a smaller, more intimate movie.

I'm not sure that big and small are the right measures of a director's success. I'd prefer to consider what we might call "the good-time" factor. By that measure, it's hard to fault Favreau's Chef. Bon appetit.

An outlandish 'Cowboys & Aliens'

This genre mash-up offers bits of fun, but its aim isn't dead-on.

Say this: There’s nothing deceptive about the title Cowboys & Aliens, an action-oriented summer movie in which cowboys square off against marauding alien invaders.

The trick of Cowboys & Aliens involves allowing disparate but familiar genres to bump up against each other, to mix clichés from western and sci-fi movies in hopes that the combination results in something fresh. I’m not sure it does, but it certainly results in something that's brazenly outlandish, an unabashed summer movie full of unabashed summer-movie ingredients.

In reasonably short order, the movie's cowboy caricatures get crosswise with alien caricatures. The resultant collision doesn’t quite revitalize either genre, but the whole enterprise is so patently absurd, it can’t help but offer bits of whacked-out fun.

The script plants its sci-fi seed early. In the movie’s opening scene, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert. He has no memory of how he got there or even who he is. He notices a strange-looking shackle on his left wrist. Clearly (at least to us), it’s the product of a civilization that’s more technologically advanced than the one Jake knows.

Before 20 or so minutes have passed, our lone cowboy finds himself at odds with a cruel cattle baron (Harrison Ford). Sure we’ve been down this road before, but both Craig and Ford – owners of two of the craggiest faces in the business -- seem built for it.

Cowboys & Aliens saunters through standard Western situations, doing a pretty good job with them. Jake rides into the town of Absolution. After a dust up with the bullying son (Paul Dano) of the local cattle baron, Jake lands in the clink.

Ford plays Woodrow Dolarhyde, a grizzled rancher who runs his spread and the town with an iron hand. Dolarhyde even thinks he can control the sheriff (Keith Carradine).

Craig glowers; Ford sneers, and both bring movie-star punch to the proceedings as Cowboys & Aliens makes its way through some tensely enjoyable scenes. Few things in movies quicken the pulse as reliably as macho posturing, and Cowboys & Aliens has its share.

Eventually, the aliens -- who fly around in aircraft that resemble giant dragonflies -- begin strafing the town. They also yank some of the townsfolk onto their ships, presumably for further study.

The aliens don’t exactly represent a triumph of sci-fi imagination. Their standard-issue horror-movie look seems to have been cobbled together from previous aliens and leftover slime, and director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and eight credited screenwriters don't give them much motivation beyond a predatory desire to conquer planets and take their gold.

Favreau and his team try to stuff as many summer thrills as possible into the movie’s saddlebags: encounters with thugs from Logergan’s former gang and with a band of Apaches, for example.

Sam Rockwell plays Doc, the saloon keeper who loses his wife to the aliens. And Olivia Wilde portrays Ella, a mysterious woman who joins the posse that sets out to find and fight the aliens.

Here’s a shocker: To battle the monsters, cattle baron and cowboys, thugs and law-abiding citizens, Indians and whites, must set aside differences and act for the common good. The aroma of an obviously stated “message’’ – never a good thing in either cowboy or alien movies -- wafts across western landscapes, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Matthew Libatique.

Craig hits a single note and holds it throughout the movie; he's playing a brutal man who’s unsure what he may have done in his past. Ford, who lately hasn’t exactly been hitting box-office bulls eyes, plays a character without a trace of Indiana Jones twinkle in his eye.

Watching Cowboys & Aliens, I kept thinking that if Clint Eastwood ever makes another Western, he might do well to cast Ford in a role that allows him fully to explore his dark side, something he can’t do in a movie as lightweight as Cowboys & Aliens.

Audiences likely will ride this Cowboy to financial success, but the alien invasion does more than threaten the denizens of a dusty western town; it forces the movie toward the expected raucous climax in which a small band of humans tries to defeat the aliens. A reminder: Noise is not the same as real excitement.

Cowboys and Aliens arrives at the nation's multiplexes with criticism-defying protection. Too crazy? “Well what did you expect from a movie called ‘Cowboys & Aliens?’ Logic? Coherence?”

Not necessarily, but I did expect a movie that did more than put its cowboys, aliens and us through a catalog of summer-movie paces.

Cowboys & Aliens, which has a fair measure of violence and gore, can also be amusing, but its aim isn’t dead-on. There’s no reason aliens (assuming there are any) couldn’t have visited Earth during the 19th century. The characters in Cowboys & Aliens don’t seem quite as amazed about this as you might think.

It’s almost as if they – like us – have seen too damn many movies.