Movie Review: Mufasa

I came into the theater without many expectations. I haven’t really liked the other live-action remakes Disney has come out with, and initially, I wasn’t planning on seeing Mufasa either. But last week I saw a trailer for the film and at the very end, song credits were given to Lin-Manuel Miranda. That motivated me to watch the film, as I have liked his work on other Disney movies like Moana and Encanto, and I thought if I didn’t end up liking the film, at least I would have good songs to leave with.

Movie:

I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible when talking about the movie. If you didn’t know, Mufasa is a prequel to “The Lion King,” so the events that happened prior to the first film. It basically exists to explain how Mufasa became King, how Scar became evil, plot details like that.  I personally thought the story was repetitive and I felt that some stuff happened just to happen, I couldn’t really sympathize with a lot of the characters because the story was moving so fast, which is crazy to say for a two hour movie. I also think that Mufasa’s story was too dependent on the original in some parts. I understand the purpose of references/homages, but I felt some were too obvious. Weirdly enough there was inspiration from Lion King 1/2 in this film, and the Lion Guard, a Disney Jr. Show. Do with that what you will, but I actually liked those references. I also think the animation greatly improved from the 2019 version, and some scenes were so pretty.

Songs

I’ll rate all the songs from 1-10 in the order they show up in the film. I’m not really a music person so I don’t know the proper terms, so my explanations will be brief.

“Milele” 6/10

I remember the chorus being very beautiful, but I could not hum any of the lyrics.

“I always Wanted a Brother” 8/10

This is probably the most popular song from the movie, and it makes sense as it’s probably the best one. The melody and lyrics are so catchy, and I think it represents the sibling relationship of Mufasa and Scar very well.

“Bye Bye” 3/10

It’s a serviceable villain song, it’s not very grand and weirdly quiet in some parts where you’d assume they’d go all out with the instrumental because it’s the main villain’s song!  It isn’t hard to listen to or anything, but compared to the villain song in The Lion King, it’s not even close to as good.

“We go Together” 6/10

Super catchy and fun, but I felt the lyrics were like “kid-ified” if that makes sense? I know this is a kid’s movie, but this was the one time I felt I was too old to be watching it. So, it’s just a tonal shift from any of the other songs in my opinion.

“Tell Me It’s You” 4/10

This made me feel bad for Scar by the way, so this song hurt the story more for me personally than the song itself sounding bad. The song alone was kind of boring.

“Brother Betrayed” 6/10

This is the turning point for one of the characters, you could probably guess which one. It’s catchy and I felt it works better as a villain song more…than the actual villain song in this movie.

The movie wasn’t as good as The Lion King, which isn’t really a negative. I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect a movie to be just as good as the classic Disney movie. I felt if the movie focused on Mufasa’s and Scar’s relationship more, rather than explain every single thing in the original (they explain why the monkey has a stick), it would be a lot better. Some of the songs were really catchy and I even have some saved to my playlist, so that’s a plus.

Overall, I’d give the movie a 6/10.