Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Broadly speaking, three sets of people care about Mufasa: The Lion King, though one will never see it. By far the largest group are followers of the story beloved to millions from the 1994 Disney animation, passable 2019 remake, and globally franchised Broadway musical. Their hope for this high-end prequel is straightforward: a deluxe holiday treat. And that simple wish is shared by the second interested party: Disney chief executive Bob Iger and his litter of hungry executives.But then there are fans of Barry Jenkins, the American director whose out-of-nowhere Moonlight won the 2017 Best Picture Oscar. That film announced him as a revelatory talent steeped in the poetry of cinema. Now he has made a movie about a hero whose likeness is already on sale at the Disney Store. (“This huggable soft toy will rule over your personal Pride Lands.”) That choice has drawn fierce criticism. “Soulless”, one former admirer told Jenkins after he shared the trailer on social media.Clearly, the arthouse camp will be boycotting. It might be best, lest their heads explode at the sight of cutesy cub Kiara, daughter of the royal Simba, left with animal babysitters at the start of the film. Actual eight-year-olds will aww, while their parents squint at the techno-witchcraft that lets a hyper-realistic mandrill speak like a human. But everyone needs to pay attention. The opening is just a framing device for the flashback at the heart of the movie: the early life story of Kiara’s grandfather Mufasa, before Disney made him a star.The clunk of the prologue hints at the challenges facing the film if it is to be seen as more than a corporate cash grab. (Which is what it is, of course.) The point of IP this precious is to recycle the familiar — but also whip up enough new ideas to justify not simply being dumped on Disney+. Jenkins’ answer is a whole lot of movie. The young Mufasa is soon torn from his family and raised with surrogates. From that simple premise come japes on the savannah, and rollicking action-adventure, and the menace of malign rival lions, and a quest narrative to dovetail with the wider legend. Oh, and songs.Some of Jenkins’ colleagues are more help than others. The tunes are — of course — by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who now seems as bored of his stuff as you may be. Meanwhile, writer Jeff Nathanson is frantic, constantly veering back to Kiara, and with her the comic relief of warthog and meerkat Pumbaa and Timon. The pair offer meta winks to moviemaking. “He’s such a visual storyteller!”In real life, Jenkins was irked enough by the online flak to publicly defend himself. Put that down to being frayed by the tension of his remit: making a Disney movie by Barry Jenkins. The visuals are a case in point. Moonlight was a film that knew the timeless power of a camera held on a single human face. Mufasa is photorealistic animation where every breeze through digital fur speaks mostly of processing power.And yet for all the compromise, the movie is, at worst, sturdy — and for the right crowd, more. The trace of a Jenkins signature remains. Even talking lions get tangible inner lives. But the best of the film is oddly self-effacing. That manic script is carefully paced out; the so-so songs given vivid staging. And there are moments of fun and even wonder for the children for whom the film has really, and rightly, been made.Of course, they won’t have the first clue who Barry Jenkins is. They still benefit, though, from the presence of a director who treats entertaining them as a job to be taken seriously. Some audiences, after all, are more important than fans.★★★☆☆In cinemas from December 20
