I grew up watching & loving the original Lion King, even creating sing & dance performances as a child at daycare, so pls understand me when I say I LOVE the original cartoon! After watching this & reading through many reviews, what bothers me most is reviewers saying it "falls flat with no emotion" or "is like an Animal Planet documentary" or "comedic moments ruined with slower speech & articulation. My response to these COURSE it appears this way! The realistic depiction of real animals is naturally going to deprive any human emotions in facial expressions that the cartoon film displayed, because real animals don't show human emotion as humans do! Basic common sense in animal depictions being truly it seems to fall "flat" should you base upon this, any Disney film to be quite honest, I found the realism quite believable when comparing to the animals depicted by behavior, character, and AGAIN, the cartoon was created showing animals with HUMAN emotion so kids could relate and understand! Back in that era, however, the closest to live-action we as children were Pixel's Toy Story or straight live-action (remake) films like Hook (not Disney directly) that had no digital imagery whatsoever. Bottom line, yes when the digital animals are created with the voices, emotional expression is limited as they're made to be more life-like (how many lions or birds do you see at the zoo showing human expressions. and I do agree that many comedic one-liners from the original were not included, but I honestly think this was much less "humanized" and more relatable for children? Perhaps, but stop living in nostalgia, ppl, and realize this is the age of realism, even with Disney, and embrace & appreciate the beauty of today's artwork 💖💓.