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The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar
R1 - America - Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (30th March 2016). |
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The Film
 The Lion King Simba (The West Wing's Rob Lowe) and his mate Nala (Being Mary Jane's Gabrielle Union) have grown up and are ruling the Pride Lands. Older cub Kiara (American Pie's Eden Riegel) is being groomed to be the future queen. Younger cub Kion (American Sniper's Max Charles), however, is just having fun with his honey badger pal Bunga (Parental Guidance's Joshua Rush). When the two youngsters chase a baobab fruit into the Outlands and Bunga nearly becomes dinner for a pack of hyenas lead by Janja ('s ), Kion discovers that he possesses the "Roar of the Elders" which baboon shaman Rafiki (Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters' Andrew Kishino) informs Simba and Nala means that their son is destined to be the leader of the Lion Guard who patrol the Pride Lands and defend the Circle of Life. Kion has not heard of the Lion Guard before because the last one was his grandfather Mufasa's (Conan the Barbarian's James Earl Jones) brother Scar who wanted to be king and wanted the patrol to help him get rid of his brother. When they refused, Scar used the Roar of the Elders to wipe them out and then lost the gift himself because he used it for evil. Despite Simba's misgivings about Kion's youth and inexperience, he appoints Kion as the leader of the new Lion Guard and charges him with recruiting "the bravest, strongest, fastest, and keenest of sight" for his team. Simba is not pleased when Kion's team is made up of "brave" Bunga, fastest cheetah Fuli (Transformers: Rescue Bots's Diamond White), strong water buffalo Beshte (42's Dusan Brown), and keen-sighted bird Ono (The Middle's Atticus Shaffer) since the Lion Guard is traditionally made up of all lions. Kiara and her catty lion friends Tiifu (Modern Family's Sarah Hyland) and Zuri (Life with Boys' Madison Pettis) are concerned that Kion and his buddies may wreck the Pride Lands before she even gets to be queen. When Janja learns of the new Lion Guard by way of fellow scavenger vulture Mzingo (Beowulf's Jonny Rees), he rallies his fellow scavengers to strike before the Lion Guard is ready and feast on entire herds of animals, and the "Pride Lands will never know what bit them!" After theatrical sequels of diminishing entertainment value, The Lion King saga heads to television with what is essentially a pilot episode for a Disney Channel series in its first season. Judging by Return of the Roar, it is a desperate enterprise from the get-go. The animation is technically proficient but uninteresting and the Beau Black-penned songs are not a patch on the first film (with the already incredibly annoying Bunga trying to spin "zuka zama" into the new "hakuna matata"). The vocal work – apart from the guest appearance by Jones – is nondescript at best and annoying at worst due to the cloying characterization rather than the talent. On the positive side for the reviewer (condolences for the fans), Return of the Roar is mercifully brief, with the bulk taken up by unmemorable musical numbers and the climactic confrontation taking up about a minute or so of the forty-five minute running time (although, to be fair, it is the setup of the rivalry that will presumably dominate the series). The end result is inoffensive for the kiddies, but adults might want to put on the ear plugs.
Video
Disney's disc of this progressive, anamorphic encode is single-layer but the feature and combined extras come up to less than an hour with a size of 3.09 GB. A higher bitrate to fill out the disc space probably would not have wound up with an appreciably superior picture that the film's target audience (or their parents) would appreciate. 
Audio
Primary audio is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track that is only really active during the musical sequences and the few action scenes; otherwise, it is pretty sedate for a feature set in the African wild. A French Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround dub is also included along with optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles. 
Extras
Apart from start-up trailers/previews, the sole extra is a music video (2:37) that is, like the feature, mercifully brief. The film defaults to Disney's "FastPlay" option which goes from the start-up trailers directly to the feature unless the viewer hits the menu button on their remote. 
Overall
The end result is inoffensive for the kiddies, but adults might want to put on the ear plugs. 
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