The Lion King 1 1/2 (2004)

Rating: 40%
Alright here's another film Meg showed me. Since I have reviewed both the original movie and the sequel, it make sense I guess to review the prequel, parallel film, The Lion King 1 1/2.

Plot: Set before and during the events of the first film, the story begins with Timon turning out to once lived with his mother and Uncle Max in their Meerkat colony. Timon is an outcast to the colony because he screws things up and wants something outside of what the colony does, so he eventually leaves to find that something and eventually meets Pumbaa and tags him along with find out what he's really looking for.

Okay so this is kind of another knock-off of something Shakespeare or Shakespeare related play. Except while the last two films were from actual Shakespeare work like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, this is based on a play that's outside of Shakespeare that's basically parallel story to Hamlet called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Basically the play went more into the exploits of the two minor character Rosencratz and Guildenstern during the events of Hamlet. The Lion King 1 1/2 is basically doing the same thing but it doesn't always work. It's not to say that none of the times where Timon and Pumbaa somehow were around when major events from the first half of The Lion King were good. Some of them in fact were interesting and even a little bit clever. But he rest of the time didn't work because either it was there just to make the reference to the first film and in some cases mess up the continuity from the first film. The story was... okay. On one hand you could say that it contributes to genuinely getting to know Timon and Pumbaa a little bit more, but not quite in the way where we learn something really important or interesting about them. Timon's mom and Uncle Max were not all that interesting except for the fact that Timon's mom was voiced by Julie Kavner who does the voice of Marge from The Simpsons. The comedy had a couple of moments where the jokes where funny or at least very clever and well thought out, but otherwise where more for kids and otherwise just made references - sometimes not always references to The Lion King. In fact there were point where they would just throw in stuff like the song "Sunrise, Sunset" from The Fiddler on the Roof kind of out of the blue.

And that's my review for The Lion King. It has cute comedy and some clever moments where the story ties into the first film, but it's otherwise a film that just didn't completely work as a parallel story to The Lion King, had new characters that were nothing special and while is not among the absolute worst that Disney has done as far as sequels go, is still not really a good movie and doesn't have a whole lot of importance to any of the characters.