Mufasa The Lion King movie review: Barry Jenkins’ visually stunning film serves lessons on what real courage and real royalty means

If the melange of landscapes and the different prides of lions, mostly in conflict with other, confuses things a bit, the songs are a letdown too — nowhere close to the magic of those 1994 film’s evergreen numbers.

Also read – The Lion King movie review: Return to the Pride Lands

That said, Mufasa: The Lion King is a fitting tribute to the big cat who gave us Simba. The lion born “without a drop of nobility in his blood” must earn his mane and name, and this film gives Mufasa a story and arc that allows him just that.

Mufasa (Pierre) is separated by the great flood from his parents when just a cub, and is saved from the water and crocodiles by another, Taka (Harrison Jr). Taka is the son of a lion king, Obasi, who would much rather eat a stray like Mufasa than include him into his pride. But Obasi’s wife Eshe (Newton) takes Mufasa under her wings, and Taka takes to him like a brother.

It’s here that the film welcomingly hews closer to the animal kingdom than Disney kingdom, apart from its very realistic and grim look. Like every “self-respecting” lion, Obasi spends his days taking long naps, while it is Eshe who must do the hunting and the rearing. Banished to Eshe’s side, Mufasa learns the tricks that Taka never gets to.

The script by Jeff Nathanson, Linda Woolverton and Irene Mecchi (who also collaborated on the 2019 remake) engages with questions of courage, loyalty and earning one’s place in the world in this part of the story, as well as failure and rising from it.

Chased by the ‘Outsiders’, a ferocious pride of what seem like albino lions (a suggestion has been made that they represent the marauding White colonisers of Africa), Mufasa must rescue Taka and head out. The Outsiders are led by a snarling Kiros (Mikkelsen), who is very clear about his all-conquering goal but fuzzy on the rest.

Mufasa and Taka make for a region called Milele (translated as Forever), a promised land “just beyond the horizon” where the grass is always green and enough to go around for everyone.

Mufasa The Lion King has been released in theatres. (Photo: Walt Disney Studios/YouTube)

Along the way, Mufasa and Taka meet up with Sarabi (Boone), Rafiki (Kani) and Zuzu the hornbill (Nyman). Once love enters the picture in the form of Sarabi, and jealousy consumes Taka, Mufasa: The Lion King enters predictable territory.

The stretch from here to Milele (which we know will be reached, despite the hurdles), all the while chased by the Outsiders, seems long and forced.

Meanwhile, humour is provided largely by what’s happening in the present, which is Rafiki telling Simba and Nala’s daughter Kiara (Carter) the story of Mufasa, as Pumbaa (Rogen) and Timon (Eichner) continue their jousting in the background. The disappointment of the meerkat and warthog in not figuring more prominently in this story, despite being so central to the other Lion Kings, is however appealing.

As this particular circle completes its life, what you are left yearning for is that knot that it promised to unravel — the story of Scar — but finally shies away from doing.

A cold, cold Kiros croons: “Circle of Life is a lie, a pretty way of saying there are predators and prey.”

Mufasa: The Lion King, where nary a drop of blood is spilled, ultimately chooses that too — the pretty way.

Mufasa: The Lion King
Director: Barry Jenkins
Cast: Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Tiffany Boone, John Kani, Preston Nyman, Blue Ivy Carter, Mads Mikkelsen, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Thandie Newton
Rating: 3.5/5