Review of Lion King, The: Read Along DVD

Introduction

The Lion King is a fine example of Disney at the height of its success following Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. It`s always been a popular story with children and adults alike and now we get the Read Along DVD. There are no clear lines between the main part and the extras here, so I`ve divided it up with a couple of the main features here, and the rest in the Features section.

Story
• The Story (16:39)

Quick recap on the basic premise. This is the story of a proud lion king, Mufasa, the love of his cub son, Simba that takes place at Priderock. However Mufasa`s scheming brother Scar gets up to no good and this leads to tragedy and the exile of Simba from the pride. Simba hooks up with Pumbaa and Timon and leads a life of "Hakuna Matata", "no worries", and grows up. As an adult he`s forced to face his regal responsibilities, and to reclaim Priderock from Scar who is ruining the delicate balance of life once held by Mufasa.

The story is told with frames from the film transitioning between successfive frames to relay the story while retaining all the original dialogue from the film and has Robert Guillaume (Rafiki) narrating.


Songs
• Circle of Life (3:58)
• I Just Can`t Wait to be King (2:50)
• Hakuna Matata (3:31)

The songs, like the story, are told with frames from the film transitioning between successfive frames while retaining the original soundtrack from the film.

Video

Presented with a 4:3 fullframe transfer, the quality is good but this is not difficult to achieve. Colours are rich and balanced and in the main feature there are no picture problems. There is a problem with the quality of the music videos however resulting in a soft look that remains unimpressive.

The subtitles seem to work well enough but these can`t be switched off so this can prove a bit distracting.

Audio

The original English dialogue track is taken from the film and edited to fit this version. It`s only DD2.0 but it sounds loud and clear and suits this read along. Robert Guillaume (Rafiki) narrates the story. The dialogue is also available in German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Features

The DVD features colourful easy-to-navigate menus, unfortunately the transition between menus is irritatingly slow. In addition to the main read along, these are the other parts of the disc.

• Music Videos
-Circle of Life (5:01)
-Can You Feel The Love Tonight (4:02)
-Hakuna Matata (3:48)

These are the three popular songs from the film, but little thought has been paid to how these are presented. The video quality is soft being reminiscent of VHS. The first two songs are Elton John tracks and the bottom third of the screen is taken up with onscreen captions of the song title/writer/publisher and the sleeve of the soundtrack CD. It doesn`t look very presentable.


• Vocabulary - This contains 20 jungle related words that are spoken, and can then be selected in the other four languages. Onscreen spelling is also provided.

• The Magical World of Disney - Trailers for other Disney titles and soundtracks.

• Search the Web - Nothing more than two links to Disney websites.

• Games
-Name the animal footprint
-Reconstruct the elephant skeleton
-Name the animal sound

You can`t select which game you want to play and have to play them all in the sequence here. The games are well produced, but are short lived. Once these have been played a dozen times I`m sure most kids will start to get bored.

A fairly average collection of extras that don`t add much more to the enjoyment of the film itself. The story is subtitled in Engish German, French, Spanish and Italian. The DVD is presented with an orange keepcase and an instruction booklet.

Conclusion

I have mixed feelings about this DVD. I feel that this abridged story loses out on the key emotion of the original film and lacks the power. I`d much rather have children sitting down to watch the full feature, with subtitles if need be, and have them watch the beautiful animation. They would hopefully get a better sense of the story and its humour as well. The 17 minute story here just doesn`t do a film like The Lion King justice.

What about the games? The three games aren`t bad, but I think even a 5 year old will get bored eventually, there`s simply nothing stimulating. There`s no sense of instant gratification and everything here executes very slowly. I got rather impatient going through the disc and I`m normally a patient thirtysomething!

This read DVD along may keep kids occupied for a little while, but the shortened story is less than 17 minutes long and once the extras are put through their paces, what`s left? As an educational DVD it falls way short of what I would expect. So with that said, I wouldn`t bother with this DVD and I don`t think you should either. Save your money and wait for Disney`s special edition of The Lion King due later this year.