9-18-11: Hakuna Matata in your face!!

THE LION KING 3-D (2011) ***** D: Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff.  Matthew Broderick, Moira Kelly, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones.

"The Lion King" is the crown jewel of the Disney renaissance that began with "The Little Mermaid".  A cinematic classic that is at once captivating, stirring, thrilling and powerful.   To this day, Disney has yet to match the synergy between story and music as seen here.   Now, seventeen years later the film is reissued in 3-D.

I have always said that the three types of film that greatly benefit from 3-D are concerts, documentaries and animated.  3-D for concerts and documentaries really puts you in the moment.  For animation, it adds additional depth to the 2D animation.   Think of the opening scene from "Beauty and the Beast".  The 3-dimensionality of that scene was achieved using multiplane animation.  3-D adds depth to the 2-D image and when done right it's breathtaking.

Time was taken to properly convert the film to 3-D and the film looks great.   The question now is do you want to see it in 3-D.   If you've seen it before, it's definitely worth seeing.   If not, the film works whether it's 2-D or 3-D.   Either way, this is one to see in a theatre while you have the opportunity.