Shah Rukh Khan is Mufasa. Mufasa is Shah Rukh Khan. Their tales are so similar, it’s impossible to tell them apart. An outsider, an underdog who has something inexplicable about him that makes him stand out, who survives many a catastrophe to emerge as an unlikely king with a reign so idyllic, it inspires awe and envy just the same.
Directed by Barry Jenkins (the Oscar-winning filmmaker of the heartbreaking Moonlight), Mufasa: The Lion King is both a sequel and a prequel to The Lion King (2019). In 118 minutes, Jeff Nathanson’s screenplay lets you in on how Mufasa gets separated from his parents while still a cub and meets another baby lion, Taka, in a land far away, who makes him his brother and invites him to live with his pack much to the annoyance of his father, King Obasi.
Apart from Taka’s transformation from a loving, guileless prince and Mufasa’s inseparable best friend to his menacing archenemies, Mufasa’s journey is tediously similar to that of his son Simba that we experienced in Jon Favreau’s The Lion King (2019). Among other things, Mufasa, too, forms a close-knit group with a bunch of motley misfits. If Simba found Pumbaa, Timon, and his future wife Nala on his odyssey, Mufasa is joined by Rafiki the mandrill, Zazu the hornbill, and a lost princess-lioness called Sarabi (Mamta Gurnani), who would be his future queen and Simba’s mother.
But despite a predictable plot and the jarring experience of watching photorealistic animals talk, sing, get angry, and emote as if they were humans, the Hindi version of Mufasa: The Lion King works. It’s largely because of Shah Rukh Khan, James Laxton’s otherworldly camerawork—thr film is an extravagant visual feast with breathtaking landscapes— and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stirring background score.
Sanjay Mishra and Shreyas Talpade reprise their roles as Pumbaa and Timon. But instead of being the key characters that they were in The Lion King, here they serve as a mere narrative tool that interrupts the story rather than add anything of value to it. Aryan Khan also returns as Simba with three new additions—SRK’s youngest son AbRam serves as the voice of the baby Mufasa, Meiyang Chang lends his voice to Taka, and Makarand Deshpande plays Rafiki.
With a keen, perceptive eye, Barry Jenkins neatly weaves together the various threads spread throughout the classic saga, as if picking up on bread crumbs those before him left for him to create a tapestry out of. In telling the ultimate underdog story, he shows us the formation of the Pride Rock, how Rafiki gets his iconic wooden stick, how Taka turns into Scar, and how various other elements conspire for Mufasa to reach where we meet him in The Lion King.
The film is brimming with callbacks and hat-tips. SRK…err…Mufasa says “Main hoon na” more than once, turning the memorable dialogue into a key plot device. Taka claws his paws onto Mufasa’s twice at crucial junctures to save him until he doesn’t.
If only Mufasa: The Lion King used some of this inventiveness and cheekiness in the songs too. The lyrics are bland and unimaginative, the kind that feels straight out of Google translate with prompts fed by teen-interns. It is so at odds with the immersive and enchanting imagery, that it becomes a cautionary tale. Unprecedented technological advancements are great but let’s please also invest in writers. That will be truly unprecedented and the kind of advancement cinema, crossover or otherwise, really needs.
(Edited by : Anand Singha)
