Greg Dorr’s review published on Letterboxd:
The Lion King is gorgeous to look at. The animators' representation of the African Savannah and its wildlife is inspiring, but almost too much so. With every scene a visual masterpiece, there's little room for the story to breathe. Luckily for The Lion King it has perhaps the most specious storyline of any major Disney animated feature. Contrived events of varying dramatic value come and go with little rationale or impact. Like Elton John's boisterous music, the onslaught of gimmicky and shticky anthropomorphic animal characters feels imagineered to sell toys, with a slapdash story invented as an afterthought to pull them together. The Lion King is so incoherent in its overall conception that it opens with a huge song extolling the virtues of the food chain and then depicts an animal kingdom in which predators and prey cooperate happily. The "Circle of Life" is forgotten the second the song ends, in much the same way Simba forgets about the monumental upheaval of his life as soon as he learns to eat bugs. Lust like a series of toy and CD commercials, only the most superficial continuity is required.