The plot is simple: Mufasa’s trusted mandrill friend, Rafiki (John Kani), tells the origin story of Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and his friend Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) to Simba’s daughter, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter). Kiara’s father is once again played by Donald Glover; her mother, Nala, is reprised by Blue Ivy’s real-life mother, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. The late James Earl Jones didn’t reprise his role as Mufasa, but the film is dedicated to him.

Initially, meerkat Timon (Billy Eichner) and warthog Puumba (Seth Rogen) were the baby sitters planning on regaling Kiara with tales of their derring-do. Their stories stink on ice, and are clearly fabrications, so Rafiki takes over.

We learn that Mufasa was born to Masego (Keith David) and Afia (Anika Noni Rose). He was swept away from his family by a massive rain that occurred after a long drought. He is saved by Taka, a lion from another pride. Taka’s father, Obasi (Lennie James), wants no part of the cub he refers to as “a stray,” but Taka and his mother, Eshe (Thandiwe Newton), take a shine to him.

Meanwhile, Kiros and his crew of white lions are laying waste to every village of animals. This conquest is to ensure that Kiros is the “ruler of everything the light touches,” a description you’ll recall Mufasa said to Simba in the original “The Lion King.” Kiros also has revenge in mind, as his only son was killed in a previous altercation with Mufasa and Taka.

Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson, who wrote “Catch Me If You Can” and adapted the 2019 version of “The Lion King,” keeps the story moving but succumbs to one major mistake. Every so often, the story is interrupted by Timon and Puumba. Full disclosure: I hate these characters. I hated them in the original movie and couldn’t stand that “Hakuna Matata” song. So, whenever they popped up with commentary (at one point, they sing “Hakuna Mufasa”) I growled like Kiros.

Since “Mufasa: The Lion King” is one of only two family-friendly offerings coming out the week before Christmas, I expect it will make an enormous amount of money. Its predecessor made over $1.6 billion worldwide — and it was terrible! A movie like this is critic-proof anyway. I doubt exhausted parents looking to distract their kids for two hours will give a damn that this film is directed by Barry Jenkins.

Yes, that Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and the series “The Underground Railroad.” His name is on two Christmastime offerings, as he also wrote the excellent boxing movie, “The Fire Inside,” which opens Dec. 25. The announcement that he took this project wreaked havoc, with some film buffs rending their garments over the fact that such an esteemed director would helm a franchise entry.

Considering the Marvel movie bad luck that befell other well-known and respected directors like Sam Raimi and Chloe Zhao, some of that handwringing was understandable. Indeed, “Mufasa: The Lion King” occasionally looks like a battle is being waged between Jenkins’s sensibilities and Disney’s desire to make everything canned and familiar.

But more often than not, I could see the director’s trademarks, albeit in a truncated form. There are those fourth wall-breaking shots of characters looking directly at us. Several shots of the camera sweeping over the landscape lasted longer than I was expecting, also a Jenkins signature. Plus, this movie has some well-crafted action sequences and instances of peril. Some of the underwater animation is especially striking.

Lest I forget, as in the recent remake of “The Little Mermaid,” the songs here are by Lin-Manuel Miranda. They run the gamut from meh to extremely catchy. There’s also a noticeable attempt to align these songs with the ones from the original film. We’ve got a “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” equivalent, for example. The big villain song, the best number in the film, is sung by Mikkelsen and will be as divisive as “Moana”’s crab song, “Shiny.” I have to admire that Miranda uses a very familiar phrase in the chorus just to troll his haters.

I saw this movie in IMAX and 3-D, the latter of which is useless to half-blind critics like me. The large format made “Mufasa: The Lion King” an enjoyable spectacle, and Disney gives us an old-school, flesh-and-blood villain to be defeated. The voiceover work is good and, as far as franchise entries go, it’s quite watchable.

★★★

MUFASA: THE LION KING

Directed by Barry Jenkins. Written by Jeff Nathanson. Starring Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Mads Mikkelsen, John Kani, Blue Ivy Carter, Keith David, Anika Noni Rose, Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, Lennie James, Thandiwe Newton, Donald Glover, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. At AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. 119 minutes. PG (intense action and peril)

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.

The Return, 2024,

Directed by Uberto Pasolini.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie Plummer, Marwan Kenzari, Claudio Santamaria, Ángela Molina, Amir Wilson, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Moe Bar-El, Amesh Edireweera, Jaz Hutchins, Aaron Cobham, Ayman Al Aboud, Nicolas Exequiel Retrivi Mora, Giorgio Antonini, Matthew T. Reynolds, Fabius De Vivo, Magaajyia Silberfeld, Handrinou Ileana, Kaiti Manolidaki, Francesco Dwight Bianchi, Pavlos Iordanopoulos, Roberto Serpi, Stefano Santomauro, Maxim Gallozzi, Karandish Hanie, and Cosimo Desii.

SYNOPSIS:

After 20 years away Odysseus decides to come back. The King has finally returned home but much has changed in his kingdom since he left to fight in the Trojan war.

The Return is certainly an accurate title. From director Uberto Pasolini, this is an intriguingly albeit sluggish character-driven story about Greek king Odysseus’s (Ralph Fiennes) return to Ithica following his disappearance during the Trojan War. Except as he washes up ashore looking like a dirty, bearded street beggar, it is gradually revealed that he doesn’t want to come home, feeling shame and regret over the ruthless and violent man he had to become to win that war, not to mention leading countless numbers of his men to death during the sacking of Troy, something that was made possible due to his creation of a gigantic wooden horse used for sneaking past the gates.

Having been absent for ten years, Odysseus’s wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) still refuses to accept the likelihood of his death and re-marry to one of several suitors who have shown up incessantly vying for her hand. Their son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) has a more defeated attitude, convinced the father he never really got to know died, the peace they currently have is a façade, and his mom needs to choose one of these men soon.

These three talented performers are exceptionally tapping into the psychological toll these ten years of uncertainty and pain have taken on them. For as loyal and resilient as Penelope is, Juliette Binoche effectively conveys that somewhere inside, this woman is about to break and knows she should probably choose one of these slimy lowlifes. Anyone with knowledge of Greek mythology is also probably aware of the creative bow-and-arrow game she uses for one of them to prove their worth. It also marks the film’s transition into something more explosive, action-based, and focused on mythology. Furthermore, the longer Penelope holds out, the more hostile and threatening some of these men become toward Telemachus, even if just as many of them wisely point out that killing him won’t get them what they want.

Until then, The Return is mostly all about that return, walking in circles around the same plot points even if it is admirable that the filmmakers (courtesy of a screenplay by Uberto Pasolini, Edward Bond, and John Collee) are more fascinated by the human stories behind the stories of war and creatures of Greek mythology. Ralph Fiennes is similarly excellent as a man who can’t bear the thought of looking his wife in the eyes after everything he has done in war, wandering around in his lowly disguise. Naturally, he increasingly becomes agitated by his wife’s predicament.

When watching two long-lost lovers reach a breaking point, the slow-burn approach works. However, The Return also feels underwritten and sits there for far too long, alongside some weak supporting characters and competently basic direction; for a film about Greek mythology, it’s disappointing that there isn’t anything visually striking here aside from how jacked Ralph Fiennes got for a role that has one action sequence. That climax is intense and satisfactory (even if it is strangely bloodless for a portion), but the journey there is frustratingly paced with stagnant storytelling.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

Despite new parameters, UCLA’s latest TV diversity study has found that women and people of color remain underrepresented in key creative and lead roles in Hollywood even though they are a crucial demographic when it comes to viewership.

Released on Tuesday, “UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report Presents: Streaming Television in 2023” marks a move away from the report’s usual format of examining the current television landscape through the lens of traditional TV seasons.

Instead, the new study examined the top television shows watched on streaming platforms in 2023, including “library” content, which are shows that have concluded but are available to stream. Rather than just focusing on what shows are being made, the study focuses on what shows audiences are watching.

“With the halt in television productions for most of 2023 and streaming viewership dominating broadcast and cable, we decided we needed to change the way we examined television to better understand what viewers want to see on the small screen,” said Ana-Christina Ramón, co-founder of the Hollywood Diversity Report in a statement. “The television industry has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Shows now aren’t just trying to stand out among the latest shiny offerings — they are competing against a whole catalog from the past.”

The study looked at the top 250 television series that were available on major streaming services from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2023 to examine the race, gender and disability status of lead actors; the race and gender of series creators; the genres and arenas of the show; Nielsen viewer ratings and total minutes viewed, and the race and gender of those with television deals.

The study argues that ranking shows by total minutes watched tells an incomplete story. By this metric, 77.5% of most-watched streaming shows in 2023 were led by white actors, while 5.5% of the most-watched shows featured Black leads, 4.4% featured Latinx leads, 2.2% featured Asian leads, 1.8% featured Middle Eastern or North African leads and 9.3% were led by multiracial actors. No shows were led by a Native actor.

But according to the report, the median rating (the percentage of television-owning households that are watching a particular program) for shows led by actors of color and those featuring stories of underrepresented communities were higher across all viewer demographics — meaning, these shows were more popular across all audiences.

“Focusing on total minutes watched gives an advantage to older shows that have more episodes and seasons on streaming platforms,” said Darnell Hunt, the interim chancellor at UCLA who founded the report with Ramón. “Current shows, which our research has repeatedly shown to be more diverse, face a disadvantage in some ways from the onset. Inevitably, that just feeds into the legacy of inequity that was built into the industry.”

So while long-running favorites such as “Suits,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Grey’s Anatomy” may lead charts that look only at the total minutes viewed, when viewership ratings are considered, shows such as “Bluey,” “Cocomelon,” “Wednesday,” “Queen Charlotte” and “Beef” would also crack the top-10 charts, according to the report.

The study also found that women and people of color continue to be key entertainment audiences. Both demographics were overrepresented in the percentage of audience based on ratings compared with their share of the U.S. population, but women also accounted for more of the minutes viewed. According to the report, women are the most engaged TV audience.