Welcome to Africa! It’s the crack of dawn, and some motherfucker is singing REALLY FUCKING LOUD. I don’t speak Zulu, but I believe the lyrics roughly translate to “WAKE UP, ANIMALS, IT’S TIME FOR A BABY LION’S BIRTHDAY AND NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR HANGOVER.”
Rhino is like, “Whut.” Antelopes are like, “Whut.” Meerkats are like, “Is this guy GD serious.” Cheetah is like, “Let me walk up this hill for a better view of you waking me up.” Birds are like, “Yo, really?” Mom giraffe is like, “YES, you have to go to the birthday party. It’s my boss’s kid.” Baby giraffe is like, “BUT WHAT KIND OF PSYCHO HAS THEIR BIRTHDAY PARTY AT 5:00 A.M.!?!?” Leaf-cutter ants are like, “Sorry, man, couldn’t get the day off.” Elephants are cool; they love a party.
They all gather around this big rock with a lion at the top. The lion is named Mufasa. This krazy baboon climbs up there and hugs Mufasa like they are old bros, which probably would not happen. Then this woman-lion is like, “Look over here, baboon, I’ve got a baby!” And baboon is like, “JACKPOT!” So the baboon rubs some jam on the baby and then throws dirt in its face, and then he dangles the baby off the edge of the rock with some Michael Jackson blanket-head realness. You know, LIKE THE WILD ANIMALS DO IN AFRICA.
Meanwhile, this kiss-ass toucan goes to visit another lion named Scar, Mufasa’s no-good brother, who’s just chilling in a cave nursing his wasting disease. The toucan’s mad at Scar for missing the baby-dangling jam ceremony. Scar eats the toucan. Luckily, Mufasa comes into the cave and is like, “Do not eat my toucan, please; I need him for blathering and ineffectual childcare.” Scar’s like, “FINE,” and spits him out.
The baby lion is named Simba. Mufasa takes him up to the top of this rock and is like, “See everything? That’s yours.” Because someday Simba will succeed Mufasa as king…of…Africa?
I don’t really understand how this form of government works. First of all, they leave out the part where Mufasa just FUCKS ALL THE LADY LIONS. Because that is definitely part of the deal. But second of all, what are Mufasa’s administrative responsibilities? And why should the zebras and the antelopes trust him to look out for their best interests!?!?! If, once per day, Barack Obama killed and ate three of my cousins, I’m not sure I’d have stayed a registered Dem through the whole administration.1
Oh, but don’t worry. Mufasa has some bullshit explanation for why it’s okay to eat their constituents: “Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass.” Yeah, um, you sure the antelopes are cool with that? I mean…the elephants and the zebras also become the grass. Couldn’t one of them be king, seeing as they’ve never killed and eaten a single one of their subjects? I just feel like the grass to murder ratio is a little off in your leogarchy.
Anyhoo, Simba goes running back to Uncle Scar (remember when you were too young to know which uncles were creepy?) all braggin’ about how he’s going to be king of Pride Rock someday. This is a sore spot for Scar, who really, really wants to be the king because he LOVES LION BUREAUCRACY, I guess. So then he decides to just murder Simba and resume his position as Mufasa’s number two. Say what you will about Scar, but when the dude has an idea, he commits. Simba isn’t just a baby, he’s a KITTEN. Can you imagine if there was a kitten that was also your nephew? The only thing less murderable than that would be if, like, the knowledge of how to make chocolate chip cookies only existed in the mind of a mini-horse that was also your grandma.
So anyway, Scar tells Simba about this really cool forbidden elephant graveyard (kind of a misnomer—really more of an “elephant just-lay-down-and-die-wherever-yard”), so Simba asks his best friend, Nala, if she wants to “GO TO THE WATER HOLE” [WINK]. Nala’s mom is like, “Fine, but take that wet blanket toucan along.” On the way, wet blanket toucan casually mentions that Simba and Nala are in an arranged marriage and are definitely going to do penis-in-vagina someday. Reeling from the news, Simba sings one of the film’s most popular songs: “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King (So I Can Make a Law that Says NO TOUCAN CAN EVER MAKE ME HAVE SEX).”
Then the toucan accidentally flies into a rhino’s asshole and the kids ditch him.
At the elephant graveyard, the kids start playing around on the bones (dood, those are people’s moms!) and are cornered by Scar’s three hench-hyenas. The hyenas are about to eat them until Mufasa shows up and bites the hyenas until they go away. I guess nobody explained to Mufasa that when a hyena eats a baby lion, the hyena turns into grass, and then the antelopes eat the grass!
The circle of life is way more complicated when everyone can talk.
Mufasa’s like, “Simba, I am very disappointed in you,” and Simba’s like, “I was just trying to be brave like you!” and Mufasa’s like, “Oh, I can’t stay mad at you (for violating all the laws of our nation and placing yourself and Nala in mortal peril and desecrating Jeff’s grandma’s grave and almost making Scar the fucking king!),” and then bestows upon Simba the royal noogie.
No offense, Mufasa, but that went really quickly from punishment to noogie. Like, you need to have some follow-through here, man! If you don’t want your kid to turn into a weird bug-eating recluse who lives with a warthog, you’ve got to enforce some rules. Real question. Does Mufasa actually exhibit any genuine parenting skills, besides having a deep voice?
Back at the cave, Scar hops out of his iron lung for a sec to be like, “WTF is you guys’s problem? You were supposed to eat my nephew,” and the hyenas are like, “Well, yeah, we were going to, but…” Then Scar sings the “Kill Mufasa” song, and it’s probably the most boring part of the movie, including the part where Rafiki is just doodling in his magic tree.
Scar lures Simba to this ravine and has the hyenas kick off a wildebeest stampede. I feel like here’s how long a baby lion could outrun a wildebeest stampede: “Oh no, it’s a st—”
Instead, Simba climbs a little tree and waits for Mufasa to come rescue him. But as soon as he’s pulled to safety, Scar throws Mufasa off this cliff like a total dildo and he gets squished by wildebeests!!! And then Simba is all down in the dust cloud like, “Daaaaaaaad!”
Dad? Are you my dad?
NOPE, WILDEBEEST. CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP.
Scar tells Simba that it’s his fault Mufasa died and everyone’s going to be mad at him, so he needs to “run away and never return.” And Simba’s like, “That seems reasonable.” And then Scar is like, “Okay, new government. Hyenas are lions now.”
Simba wanders out into the desert and is about to become a buzzard’s snack when he’s rescued by Timon and Pumbaa, a pair of confirmed bachelors who only care about two things: denial and bugs. They’re like, “Listen, kid. We know that you just witnessed your father’s murder and snuggled with his corpse and then were framed by your uncle and subsequently became a homeless youth and were almost eaten alive by vultures as you wandered in the desert, but you should have a positive attitude! Similarly, Pumbaa farts a lot, but you don’t see him moping around. WHAT’S A-MOTTO WITH YOU????”
Also, Timon is just constantly sticking his entire forearm into Pumbaa’s nostril.
Simba grows into an adult, lovin’ life, somehow eating enough bugs to sustain an entire lion, until one day when this other lion shows up. Oh, shit! It’s Nala! And she’s a hottie with a naughty body! And she’s like, “Simba! You’re the king!” and Timon and Pumbaa are like, “WHAT IS A MONARCHY WE ARE ANIMALS.”
As Simba and Nala erotically lap water from a stagnant bog, their eyes meet and it’s LIIIIIOOOOON ROOOOOOMAAAAAANCE!!!!!
Nala tries to convince Simba to come back to the Pridelands and fix all the shit that Scar douched, but he’s like, “Nah,” and she’s like, “K.” Timon and Pumbaa are all, “YAAAAASSS!!! BACHELORZ 4 LYFE! MGTOW!” and Simba gets ready to kick back and eat bugs until death.
Then Rafiki the krazy baboon shows up and tells Simba that his dad is still alive—which, I don’t know how many of you have a dead dad, but it’s a pretty fraught issue—and then when Simba gets all excited, he just points to Simba’s fucking reflection in a pond and gives a speech about how dead people live forever in our hearts. Yeah, I know my dead relatives live on inside me, but fuck you, man! That’s really not the same as being able to hug your dad! This is emotional monkey abuse!!
Luckily for Rafiki, who is about to get punched in his fucking tooth, Ghost Mufasa picks that exact moment to show up in the sky and lecture Simba like a dick. “Simba,” he says, “you’re a fuckup. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the circle of life. Stop eating bugs, you loser. Remember who you are. You are my son and the one true king.” Then he goes back up to lion heaven to play two-on-two basketball with Confucius, Anne Frank, and James Gandolfini.
Simba decides to go challenge Scar and reclaim his throne. After running across the entire Sahara, I guess, he gets to the Pridelands where Scar has somehow managed to dry up all the water with his shitty attitude. Despite being a diabolical mastermind, Scar immediately admits to killing Mufasa for no reason, undermining 100 percent of his leverage against Simba. Simba dumps him off a cliff, while Pumbaa kills all the hyenas for fat-shaming him.
Then all the water comes back to the Pridelands, due to physics.
So, the moral of The Lion King, I guess, is don’t push your older brother into a wildebeest stampede because someday your nephew might throw you in a hyena-infested fire? Also, the sky is full of dead lions. Being alive is a fright.
RATING: 7/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
1 Hahaha, this joke was funny during the Obama administration, when it was written, but is less funny during the Donald “Inject Disinfectant” Trump administration! Hahahaha, I long for the sweet relief of a lion’s jaws closing upon my head!