Metacritic reviews

Pure, eye-popping pleasure.

Has the resonance to stand not just as a terrific cartoon but as an emotionally pungent movie.

A timeless classic, full of excitement, humor, witty asides and memorable characters.

This is the Mickey Mouse factory at its finest, with inventive animation, stirring music and a pride of inspired, almost-human animals.

There are moments of fun and humor, to be sure, but the undercurrent is of a far more serious, "adult" nature. The Lion King is primarily about guilt and redemption.

A dazzling -- and unexpectedly daring -- addition to the Disney canon.

It's a thumping good adventure.

For all the undeniable merits, it somehow feels manufactured, and thus, to a degree, calculated - the product not of a collective imagination taking esthetic chances, but of an imaginative collective putting the rivets into a well-wrought plan that can't go awry.

The result is a step toward multiculturalism and ecological correctness, though not without a certain amount of confusion. The movie is not quite as entertaining as The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.

Shakespearean in tone, epic in scope, it seems more appropriate for grown-ups than for kids. If truth be told, even for adults it is downright strange.