I was worried during the first half hour that this wasn't going to be a very good movie, but the personalities of the characters came out after the first couple of scenes. It was in desperate need of them. Keeping in mind that this is before the young filmmakers coming up in the 70's and 80's had changed the look and pacing of modern American movies, it's a decent war adventure. It's made better than the sum of its parts by a fun cast. The plot is preposterous, but I'm gonna assume it's just as preposterous in the book.

It's better than you'd expect. Light hearted, corny send up of the killer doll horror movie. You have to be willing to watch a B-movie to enjoy it and people born in the early eighties will catch the most of the movies plentiful references.

It's admittedly a strange concept to make a bio pic substituting the main character for a CGI Chimp, but it worked far better than I ever would have thought. It seems random as hell, but actually suits the personalty and the story. I'm not a fan of pop music, particularly, but found myself familiar with many of the songs. Maybe not being a superfan of Robbie's was helpful because I wasn't always sure where the trajectory of the story was going. I'd encourage anyone with an interest to give the movie a chance.

It was about a half hour into the movie, when we had cut back to Timon and Pumba telling jokes and interrupting the narrator (Rafiki), that this was going to be a pretty thin movie in terms of its depth. It has some fun songs written by Lin Manuel Maranda. Solid and occasionally fun V.A. performances. Nice, if CGI heavy visuals. So it isn't all bad. It's just not as magical a return to Pride Rock as you might have hoped it could be.