The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride – The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998)

Directed by: Darrell Rooney, Rob LaDuca | 81 minutes | animation, adventure, family, romance, musical | Original voice cast: Matthew Broderick, Neve Campbell, Andy Dick, Robert Guillaume, James Earl Jones, Moira Kelly, Nathan Lane, Jason Marsden, Suzanne Pleshette, Ernie Sabella, Lacey Chabert, Cam Clarke

How do you make a sequel to the much loved and acclaimed ‘The Lion King’? Especially when the original story of guilt, forgiveness, and responsibility—it was almost like a Greek tragedy—is wrapped up as beautifully as here, it’s easy to see a sequel as nothing more than a blatant cash-in to the giant’s success. ‘The Lion King’. It would be nice if the opposite could be said about ‘The Lion King 2: Simba’s pride’, but the truth is unfortunately that the film is really little more than an uninspired and weak copy of Disney’s classic.

Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect the same quality from these direct-to-video sequels to huge successes, but sometimes these movies are still quite entertaining and original in their own humble way. Not so in the case of ‘The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride’. Not only is the original story (largely) redone – now with Scar’s widow as his deputy (and son Kovu as puppet) who has to dethrone Simba – and the film is (partly because of this) very predictable, there there is hardly any humor present, there is a pretty bigoted atmosphere of the film, and the animation is of a sad quality. Just to name a few things.

One of the film’s biggest flaws is that it tried to make everything resemble part 1 as much as possible. Once again there is an outcast lion who wants to take the king’s place (and again this lion is surrounded by a bunch of emaciated minions [leeuwen in plaats van hyena’s dit keer], including a manic, Whoopi Goldberg-esque ugly). And again the king’s child falls in love, and gets into trouble, only to eventually come back to the fold to take the rightful place – respectfully – in the “circle of life” (why all those gazelles and other lower animal species are so happy with this cycle remains a mystery). Even several “shots” in this film seem to be taken one-on-one from the original.

But in everything the film is inferior to ‘The Lion King’. Timon and Pumba’s humor occasionally hits the mark, but Zazu (no longer Rowan Atkinson) provides little pleasure, and neither does the fortune-telling baboon Rafiki. Not to mention the painfully nasty sidekick lions, who act as moronic as possible (and are animated) in a desperate attempt to mimic the cute hyenas from the original. And the animation is pretty awful too. Occasionally something aesthetically pleasing comes along, but actually it doesn’t deserve to be associated with the name “Disney”. Then you can expect a certain standard. It is hard to find here. The animation is crude, movements flow poorly and the characters created here are not at all interesting.

Fortunately, in the second half the film starts to deviate more and more from the original, which gives the whole a bit more of its own character. Sympathy and pity for “foreigner” Kovu is built up, and Simba and his flock, interestingly enough, turn into the bad side for a moment. Also, the antics of the couple in love are sometimes entertaining or cute (with overly happy faces when the two see each other again), but they are only a few welcome revival in a film that should never have been made. Disney-unworthy.