Reviews for The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride is about the daughter of Simba and Nala, who falls in love with the cub from the other side of the Pridelands, where the hyenas used to live.

This is one of the best animated dtv-sequels I've ever viewed. It ties in to the original storyline clearly. The music is just as good as, or better than, the first. The animation and artwork, again, just like the 1st. NO cheap TV-series styled animation here. Although, the plot is much darker than the first; if it were on TV, I'd give it a TV-Y7 or G rating.

The parts that lag:
The ending seems a bit rushed.
Timon and Pumbaa are in this less, but they're still fun to watch.

This, in my opinion, was probably the last of the great Disney direct-to-video sequels. Check it out!

TLK 2: Simba's Pride is one of the best direct-to-video sequels by Disney so far. The animation, while not exactly as good at Disney's theatrical feature films, is very good in many parts. Far better than in their previous DTV sequels, such as Return Of Jafar. The music is excellent, actually better than some of Disney's NON-DTV sequels, which is incredible. I simply love the songs "One of Us", "My Lullaby", "We are one" and "Love Will Find A Way", even "Upendi" is a fun song to listen to despite the quite kiddyish sequence in the movie. The song "He Lives in You" I was already familiar with from the "Rhythm of the Pride Lands" album, a "sequel" CD to the music of the first Lion King. The story was at the time pretty unique for Disney, now it seems to have become their trademark to make all their sequels about the first films' characters' children and their adventures. The new characters range from okay to great, including Simba's and Nala's daughter Kiara, Scar's widow Zira who seeks revenge for the death of her husband, her daughter Vitani and her two sons, Nuka who is constantly fighting for his mother's attention and Kovu, Scar's destined follower who eventuallt falls in love with Kiara. The returning characters from the first film, Simba, Nala, Timon, Pumbaa, Zazu and Rafiki have either been slightly altered or left in the background. Nala hardly has a role in the movie at all, she's merely there to support Simba in his decisions. Rafiki is of course still the wise old baboon, always ready to knock some sense into people's heads when they seem too dumb to decide things on their own. Timon and Pumbaa are simply the comic relief, which is a shame, given that in the first film they had more potential and actually contributed to the story. Their characters haven't been completely ruined, but they're not the same as in the first movie either. Their jokes pretty much center around Pumbaa's stench and eating bugs. The "Hakuna Matata" sentence is pretty much thrown away (which is even said in the film), which leaves them with almost nothing. Many people claim that Simba's character has been completely demolished, but I actually think his motives and thoughts were very realistic and understandalbe. Would YOU really trust the son of your arch nemesis who has been trained all his life to kill you? And Zazu......Poor, poor Zazu. His voice, which was the best thing about him in The Lion King couldn't be performed by Rowan Atkinson, so they took someone else, who simply can't live up to his predecessor. The sarcastic attitude and English accent don't work at all, so I'm glad they only made Zazu a very minor character in the sequel.

The film was a disappointment to a lot of Lion King fan, for understandable reasons. If you're expecting for a spectacle with deep, almost religious-like mysteriousness and wonders of Africa, it's probably not going to please you. But I enjoyed the songs and some of the new characters and I think it's a good movie for a DTV sequel.