Netflix: The Lion King (1994)

The Lion King (1994)

I'm not a big musical theatre fan. I'm really not. Somehow, I get cast in musicals all the damed time. The first role I ever performed on stage (not counting my 6th grade debut as Citizen #11 in a class production of Julius Caesar) was in a musical. I can carry a tune. So trust me when I say that if I admit to liking a musical, it's a pretty big deal.

As a musical, this movie sucks like so many things have never sucked before. The songs were execrable pieces of jarring nonsense that literally made me cringe. Granted, I watched it yesterday, on little sleep, feeling a bit cranky. But! It was still awful! Oh god!

I really cannot explain to you how annoyed I was. The scripting and placement of the songs, the conceits used to get the characters into a dancing and singing frenzy - just terrible. Like most musicals, none of it made sense, it was contrived, the music felt shrill, and none of it inspired any other emotion but severe annoyance.

The silver lining of this is that the songs wouldn't have seemed so terrible if the rest of it weren't so damned awesome. The wildebeast stampede, Rafiki, the presenting of Simba at the very top of the story, Rafiki, Jeremy Irons = Awesome, the fact that I kept forgetting Matthew Broderick was voicing the older Simba, and Rafiki all served to complement some of the lovely animation and feel of anything without songs accompanying it.

They should re-make this one, but without the shitty songs. That would be awesome.

this lockbox

this lockbox of joy and summer's end tangle of ends and odd
sparkling and regenerated, regurgitated from the wellspring of decide
chained up and curtailed, veiled away she sailed to thank the past for sticking around
this combination lock, expecting warm breath of words whispered over -- silence only in this month's-end tally of love me love me not
cycle and bled and emote
rote
memory stitched in little tiny letters across her brow, her prow, her proud
face - taking back the night, the day, the mid-afternoon
weeping in the tiny tiny, unexpectedly, sincerely, keenly

this lockbox of stasis and repair
tools to fix and flux
sine wave directorial pattern anticipatory, incidental, predictable
boring and then forgotten

chained up and curtailed
self-reflect, edited, transmitted, aged like cheese uncorked uncapped left to breathe
left to breathe
and breathe
and breathe