The more I watch this and think back on it, the more I love it. Like Simba’s Pride, it is one of few examples of truly successful Disney sequels. I think, in fact, it’s safe to say that The Lion King series is the only one that Disney haven’t yet completely ruined with the sequelisation process. There’s parts of Hakuna Matata that make me seriously wonder how it got past whatever screening process Disney have that leads to the processed crap that usually gets put straight-to-video.

Anybody who realised that The Lion King was basically an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” will probably love Hakuna Matata, because, essentially, Hakuna Matata is Disney’s version of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”. Timon and Pumbaa take us back, “before the beginning…”, and we see the story from their own unique point of view – why the animals bowed for baby Simba, for example, and the impact of the showstopper, “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” on a good night’s sleep. It might sound like this is some kind of mickey-taking exercise (excuse the pun), but Hakuna Matata, while being almost entirely comedic in tone, never once disrespects the original movie.

Most of the music used is either music from the original movie, or music from other movies, like, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or The Peter Gunn Theme, but there are a couple of new songs, which I have to say have really grown on me.

And then, I almost forgot, there’s the framing device, which has Timon and Pumbaa “now” watching “the movie” that we’re watching in silhouette. This adds a whole nother dimension to the movie which means anything goes – at one point, mid-thrill sequence, suddenly the movie “changes channel” to QVC (Pumbaa has sat on the remote).

How much you love this movie will all depend on how much you love Timon and Pumbaa. Forget their TV series, by the way, this is far more respectful to the original characters. We see how their friendship grows from an acquaintance, and Timon’s whole life journey. It actually gets to be beautiful in places. But maybe it’s just me or that slug I ate.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2004 at 7:12 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.