Film Review: In Time

In Time. Rated M (violence and infrequent coarse language). 109 minutes. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol.

It is only the intriguing ‘time as currency’ premise that keeps this laboured, poorly-structured film afloat – and while it’s a masterstroke of story-lining (represented by the digitally-enhanced timepieces embedded on everyone’s forearms), it ultimately becomes unforgivably tedious as one more ‘what you do with your time money’ metaphor crashes to the ground. Like a really big, heavy rock.

When Will Salas’s (Justin Timberlake) mum (Olivia Wilde) dies in his arms having been unable to afford the two-hour bus fare, young Will becomes determined to break free from the poverty-stricken ghetto where he lives, and hold the rich to account for the unfair distribution of time.

Unable to decide whether it’s Robin Hood, Bonnie and Clyde or just an incredibly under-produced sci-fi epic (look out for the scene starring Mr Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and an uncredited couch), In Time constantly threatens to capitalise on its fascinating premise – and never does. Instead, Hollywood’s hottest young things all wander around looking gorgeous, dazed and confused – but none more so than poor Cillian Murphy (as timekeeper Raymond Leon) who appears to be struggling to cope with whatever the hell’s supposed to be going on.

Ms Seyfried (as rich girl Sylvia Weis) wins major respect for managing to run city blocks in heels the size of small skyscrapers, while fans of television’s Mad Men will recognise Vincent Kartheiser in his big-screen debut as her father, Philippe.

To his credit, Mr Niccol (Gattaca) has delivered a timely riff on class, greed, population control and revolution – important contemporary themes that are increasingly playing out in our daily global news coverage. It’s just a shame that the cinematic possibilities his story constantly threatens to unleash never actually eventuate.

Pictured: Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried in In Time.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group and the print edition is included below.

Theatre Review: A Stranger in Town

A Stranger in Town. Written by Christine Croyden. Directed and designed by Alice Bishop. Inspired by the original musical diary of Otto Lampel. Original score and musical direction by Matt Lotherington. Lighting design by Richard Vabre. With Amanda LaBonte, Sophie Lampel, Jamie McDonald and Drew Tingwell. Presented by Essential Theatre. fortyfive downstairs, Melbourne. Until Sunday 13 November.

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.” ― Mark Twain

Precious memories are at play in this eloquent and involving memory play – imaginatively, impeccably, lovingly, and often quite beautifully, delivered to the stage by Ms Bishop and performed by a uniformly excellent cast, who handle their challenging multiple roles with pure theatrical instinct and immense skill.

As the ghosts of journeymen and women – past and present – take their places on the side of the stage (both shadowed and illuminated by Mr Vabre’s excellent and always atmospheric lighting design), Otto Lampel (Drew Tingwell) begins his journey across the Atlantic on a boat bound for Canada. It is the late 1940’s – and Mr Lampel, a Czechoslovakian Jew – is beginning an immensely personal and equally dangerous journey to discover the essence of his humanity … and what remains of his identity.

Having fled Prague at the start of World War II – the only member of his family to survive Nazi-led genocide – Lampel is haunted by wartime horrors (quite brilliantly realised in an ingenious mountaintop scene) and the extent to which his spirit has been so rigorously interrogated that he has become an unreliable witness of his own life’s values and accord.

Mr Tingwell captures – perfectly – the introspective, layered, studious and dramatic reach of the fascinating Mr Lampel, while Ms Lampel (the real Otto Lampel’s granddaughter), Mr McDonald and Ms LaBonte shine in their roles including fellow travellers, a lion in the zoo (Mr McDonald works wonders here), a statue in the park (Ms Lampel), and restaurant owners in Montreal (Mr McDonald and Ms LaBonte).

The highlights of Ms Croyden’s multi-layered, cryptic, symbolic and richly-allegorical script are many – with the stakes at play powerfully underlined when one of Mr Lampel’s earlier travelling companions collapses into the restaurant he has been frequenting. It’s a heart-breaking moment of stark realisation (and breathtakingly well done), which brings sharply into focus the risks our fellow human beings are prepared to chance in order to flee persecution with something akin to blind optimism and indefatigable hope for a brighter future.

While it certainly resonates with our nation’s own asylum-seeker dilemmas and their attendant perverse lack of fundamental regard for humanity and personal history, A Stranger in Town never feels like it is trying to be worthy and earnest issues-based theatre. It dances, instead, with artful and poetic adventurousness – and is grounded by Ms Bishop’s gorgeous and evocative costumes into which the cast change on each darkened side of the stage, having plucked them from within a motley collection of suitcases. It is a brilliant theatrical device – perhaps no more effortlessly incorporated than when Otto’s frosty, strident wife (Ms Lampel rising to the occasion again) arrives in Montreal from London to determine for herself whether her husband intends to return with her to their son in London. The cryptic contents of the satchel she brings with her are, under Otto’s orders later, to be burned. It’s an incisive moment entirely lacking in sentimentality – one of the many fine qualities A Stranger in Town boasts.

Mr Lotherington’s pre-recorded original score (which was certainly not helped on opening night by a stubbornly recalcitrant speaker) could do with a judicious prune – particularly some of the underscoring which, in the presence of such fine performances, occasionally tends to rather unsubtly underline the fact that this is a ‘musical’ fable as opposed to serving the text and the performances of it as insightfully as the stagecraft does.

The original songs (based on Otto Lampel’s musical diary which was recorded in Canada) are fine and engaging, however the duet between Otto’s new lover and his English wife only serves to spark an surprisingly discomforting comparison with an identical moment between Miss Saigon’s Kim and Ellen. (It is, in fact, so completely jarring that the show would be none the poorer for its loss altogether.) Mr Tingwell does, however, prove himself to be a fine pianist and the cast acquit their musical responsibilities in fine form.

Ultimately, A Stranger in Town’s profound, overriding sense of optimism for a life of love, happiness and understanding is thoroughly engaging – and Essential Theatre should be encouraged to refine it further and set sail with it to the European festival circuit where, I suspect, it will be even more of an absolutely unqualified success.

Pictured: Sophie Lampel in a publicity still from A Stranger in Town. Supplied.

Film Review: Contagion

Contagion. Rated M (mature themes and infrequent coarse language). 106 minutes. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Screenplay by Scott Burns.

With his breakthrough independent feature Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Steven Soderbergh created one of the most important and talked-about films of the 1990s – before delivering the outstanding Oscar-winners Erin Brockovich and Traffic (2000). His passion for big, star-fuelled ensembles reached its zenith with Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and sequels Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007).

A-list Hollywood casts (Clooney, Damon, Pitt, Roberts, Law, etc) give the impression of being prepared to do practically anything to appear in a Soderbergh film – so the polite way to respond to the monumental bore that is Contagion would just be to smile and say “Whoops.”

When a killer virus threatens to rapidly eradicate a large percentage of the world’s population (starting with Gwyneth Paltrow’s jet-setting Beth, pictured), the best brains in the scientific and health world (Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould and Jennifer Ehle leading the field) must first work out how to contain the spread of the virus, while racing against time to develop a vaccine.

Equal parts geography lesson, science lesson and Dettol commercial, Contagion constantly threatens to ramp up the tension, the thrills and the chills and yet absolutely fails to be able to do so. The set-up shows real promise, as besieged experts from all over the world prepare to take on the threat of a global pandemic as people start to either froth at the mouth and die and/or panic.

Containing nothing of the genre’s genuine horror/thriller potential (of which I Am Legend and 28 Days Later are just two vastly superior examples), what remains incomprehensible is the extent to which the acting talent on hand (Matt Damon and Jude Law round out the stellar cast) is utterly wasted in scene after ponderous scene of over-produced, self-reverential tedium.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group and the print edition is included below.

Theatre Review: The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane. Director Gavin Quinn, Designer Aedin Cosgrove, Costume and Prop Designer Sarah Bacon. Andrew Bennett, Derrick Devine, Conor Madden, Bashir Moukarzel, Gina Moxley, Daniel Reardon, Judith Roddy. With local players Kylie McCormack, Sue Tweg, Great Danes Absolute Dane My Gentleman (Santi), Monteral Full Circle (Gertie) and drama students from the Trinity Grammar School, Kew Tim Dennett, Fred Hiskens, William Lodge, Alex Hatzikostas, Thomas Little, Andrew Kondopoulos, Liam McCopping, Atticus Lyon and Nick Wood. Pan Pan Theatre (Ireland) presented by Arts Projects Australia and the Melbourne Festival. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne. Until Saturday 22 October.

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“Remember you must die.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

The Irish make theatre (in the truest sense of the term) like no-one else. The opening night of Brian Friels’ Dancing at Lughnasa on London’s Westend (where it had transferred from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre), remains the theatrical highlight of my life. But this Pan Pan Theatre production of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane certainly gives it a run for its money – constantly nudging at the limits of theatricality with a rare and breathtaking curiosity performed with exacting stagecraft and the unequalled Irish passion for words and language; the definitive story.

And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Partly an anarchic vivisection of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a robust behind-the-scenes tragicomedy as three ideal ‘Hamlets’ audition for the leading role, and literally littered with illuminating intertextual juxtapositions (Samuel Beckett is superbly represented by the post-apocalyptic Endgame), The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane is a theatrical construct of unique, fiercely original mind-fuckery of the highest order.

As much as it defies (and denies) labels, The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane invites absolute scrutiny on a great number of psychologically compelling levels. It also, both relievedly and delightfully, plays with the extent to which it is enamoured with its own intellectual conceits: a monumental Pinteresque pause follows the first mention of “postdramatic” and, in a bravura moment, the Ghost walks – quite literally – out of the building.

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane begins with an engaging prologue – a lecture on the stability of Shakespeare’s text among other things – from an academic (delivered with dry good humour by Sue Tweg). It’s a brilliant device – serving equally to lower, unsettle and provoke our expectations with particular insights: quoting Muriel Spark’s “problems you can solve, paradoxes you have to live with” leads into a fine thread on the objectification of the emotional needs of the women in Hamlet (radically deconstructed by an unforgettable mad scene later). A strangled rendition of “Greensleeves” on the recorder then catapults us into the audition process – overseen by the play’s director Mr Quinn and other production personnel.

The audition process is the perfect way to not only level the playing field but also raise the stakes – while robbing us of our ability, and need, to judge. The first act ends, however, with the audience being invited onto the stage to stand next to the Hamlet of our choice. Suddenly, the high-stakes quest for the role becomes something more like a community sporting match – and the damaged, eye-patch wearing Mr Madden is chosen (as he apparently often is).

And it’s not difficult to understand why. With his hapless recounting of his early days on stage and his poignant description of how he might have (somewhat gymnastically and over-enthusiastically) performed the role were he not so scarred (and scared), Mr Madden set himself up perfectly for the challenge: the dreamer, the procrastinator, the athlete and the provocateur … the ideal Hamlet.

The audience were then summarily dismissed so that the company could prepare for Act 2 – their performance of Hamlet. Standing outside the theatre, I couldn’t help wondering how on earth they would ‘bring us back’. Socialising, gossiping, laughing and smiling – we were at once both an audience united and an audience divided. I needn’t have been concerned. Upon re-entering the theatre, Aedin Cosgrove and Sarah Bacon’s design had transformed the space into a candlelit wonderland of divine theatrical order. Metal rubbish bins lined the stage (equal parts Beckett’s beloved chessboard and England’s orderly country garden) – before the ensemble took to the stage and delivered the “To be, or not be” monologue in a round. And I was, from that point on, hypnotised.

The company’s Hamlet is an expansive, jumbled, intertextual, anti-narrative tour de force of playful invention – topped by the arrival of the Trinity Grammar School Drama Students who perform the travelling players' ‘play within a play’ and the gravedigger scene like they’ve never been performed before. And just when it all appears to be skating along the edge of tongue-in-cheek, self-aware and joyful abandon, we are suddenly thrust into hell, when, having crawled out of a rubbish bin, a soaked Judith Roddy delivers a blistering, postmodern riff on Ophelia’s mad scene that is undeniably the dramatic highlight of a most brilliant and inspirational night at the theatre.

Pictured: Conor Madden in The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

Film Review: What's Your Number?

What’s Your Number? Rated MA 15+ (strong sexual references). 106 minutes. Directed by Mark Mylod. Screenplay by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden. Based on the novel 20 Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnak.

While Ally Darling (Anna Faris) is travelling home having been unceremoniously sacked from her marketing job, she reads a magazine article informing her that women who have had more than 20 sexual partners rarely end up happily married to the love of their life. Determined to be happily married like her younger sister Daisy (Whip It’s Ari Graynor) is about to be, Ally enlists the help of her neighbour Colin (Chris Evans) to track down her 19 ex-lovers in the hope that one of them will have become her Mr Right.

One thing is an absolute certainty. It will be a race to the best seats for fans of Mr Evans (Captain America) and the sparkling Ms Faris (Scary Movie) as they cavort (mostly in various degrees of undress) in this gleefully smutty, opportunistic romantic comedy that also – somewhat strangely – happens to be a laughter-free zone.

Like its step-sister Bridesmaids, What’s Your Number? focuses on the travails of an under-achieving young woman in the lead-up to a big family occasion with all its attendant tension and potential for chaos. It's an increasingly disturbing trend, and the wedding sequences (with Blythe Danner chewing up the scenery as the girls’ mum, Ava) all rather regretfully play out with a musty whiff of familiarity – and long before the film grinds to a halt, we are utterly convinced that there is a much better movie struggling to get out from underneath all the screenplay’s layers of contrivance.

What saves it from being a frightfully predictable bore is Ms Faris’s immensely likable Ally daring to re-visit her ex-lovers and Mr Evans’s smooth-as-silk, struggling muso Colin who, having been the master of the one-night-stand, finds himself falling in love with this creative, determined and optimistic young woman across the hall. The film’s best scenes are certainly when this joyful, jaded but charismatic pair are at their unrestrained and romantic best – which, sadly, is still not enough to make it truly memorable.

Pictured: Chris Evans and Anna Faris in What's Your Number?

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Theatre Review: The Magic Flute

Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Impempe Yomlingo). Adapted and Directed by Mark Dornford-May. Musical Director Mandisi Dyantyis. Choreographer Lungelo Ngamlana. Additional music and lyrics by Mandisi Dyantyis, Mbail Kgosidintsi, Pauline Malefane, Nolufefe Mtshabe. Performed in English and Xhosa. The Isango Ensemble presented by the Melbourne Festival. The State Theatre, Melbourne until Sunday 16 October.

Composed in 1791 (the year of his death) with a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s The Magic Flute is one of the most beloved operas in the repertoire. Its origins as a singspiel (a play with songs) were most brilliantly realised in Milos Forman’s film of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, in which the stricken Mozart delivers his glorious vaudeville in a suburban theatre to capacity crowds who are enthralled by the work’s musical and dramatic adventurousness. Away from the rigorous, uptight tradition of the Court, Mozart – it could be argued – had finally found his Tribe.

And how, I couldn’t help imagining, Mozart would have adored the Isango Ensemble's stunning re-imagining of his beloved masterpiece – receiving its long-overdue Australian Premiere last night as one of the headline acts in this year’s Melbourne Festival.

From the first notes of the instantly recognisable overture to the final joyous celebration of triumph over adversity – it was constantly impossible to hold back the tears as years of austere, straight-jacketed, over-produced Flutes were swept to one side and replaced by a previously impossible to imagine sense of almost divine synchronicity. This is a Magic Flute for our troubled times – a never less than awe-inspiring liberation of the musicality that is innate within each us.

Played mostly on marimbas (traditional xylophone-like instruments with the full range of a Western keyboard’s sharps and flats), steel drums, and – even more astonishingly – glass bottles partly filled with water, Mozart’s score was given a breathtakingly beautiful new lease on life; so much so that I doubt I will be able to listen to it in quite the same way again.

It could also be argued, however, that without the many previous incarnations of this problematic opera, the Isango Ensemble version might have limited points of reference. Musically, the purists might mourn the absence of the lush, traditional orchestrations – not to mention the overall result of Mr Dornford-May’s judicious pruning and sophisticated and adventurous tempi (two and quarter hours flies by and other opera producers would do well to take note).

What is a certainty, however, is that by replacing instrumental orchestrations with vocal accompaniment (as in Papagano’s poignant Act 1 aria about his quest to find a wife) and the extraordinarily moving a capella account of the glorious prayer for the male chorus that opens Act 2, left me with a newfound appreciation for Mozart’s intricate harmonies – illuminated in a truly magical new light; beautifully and often more thrillingly sung as I have ever heard them before, anywhere in the world.

The colourful kingdom in which The Magic Flute takes place is effortlessly relocated to a corrugated-iron clad South African township, where the trials and tribulations of our journeymen and women are given a profound new sensibility. Infused with overtones of tribal initiation, guerrilla warfare and an array of Western influences (including a fabulous nod to The Supremes and a fabulous set of outlandish Afro wigs), every aspect of the interpretation made perfect sense – with one scene of dead bodies covered with grey blankets, in particular, packing an immensely powerful punch.

The ‘grab bag’ aesthetic of the costume design is an absolute masterstroke – with Papagano in camouflage, beautifully vibrant tribal attire, pink nightdresses (with matching teddy bears), dancing boys in their very camp flares, and a spectacular diva-esque frock for the Queen of the Night, all playing an important role in defining time, place and circumstance.

This is an extraordinarily rewarding night of compelling music theatre. Go – and experience The Magic Flute like you never have before, and probably never will again.

Film Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love

Crazy, Stupid, Love. Rated M (sexual references and infrequent coarse language). 118 minutes. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Screenplay by Dan Fogelman.

With more than a hint of American Beauty envy, Crazy, Stupid, Love is only ever a moderately appealing film that ultimately fails to decide precisely how it wants us to feel. There are certainly some interesting story strands (a young boy’s first hopelessly awkward infatuation with his baby-sitter is beautifully done), but they all suffer from feeling as though Mr Fogelman (Cars, Entangled) has tied them all together in knots. Really tight knots.

When Emily Weaver (Julianne Moore in teary mode) tells her doting, everyman husband Cal (Steve Carell) that she wants a divorce, Cal immediately ends up drowning his sorrows in a bar. Enter Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling) who takes the bereft Cal under his wing before hatching a plan (which includes the film’s winning make-over sequence) to help his new protégé win back the woman of his dreams.

Mr Ficarra and Mr Requa (Bad Santa, I Love You Phillip Morris) both succeed in being unable to bring any real levity and humour to the proceedings, and the uneven pacing and a lack of lightness of touch results in a film that ends up plodding through its almost two hour running time. The exceptions are the marvellous performances by Jonah Bobo (as the Weaver’s love-struck son, Robbie) and Analeigh Tipton (as the object of young Robbie’s infatuation, Jessica). When the film momentarily diverts its attention from the sombre Cal (played in deadly earnest by Mr Carell), it begins to resemble something we could be interested in – but sadly, not for long.

Mr Gosling (Half Nelson, The Notebook) slinks through in stud mode, but is totally unconvincing when Jacob finds himself unexpectedly bitten by the true love bug – delivered courtesy of the feisty Hannah (Zombieland's Emma Stone), who challenges him to drop the sex god act and reveal more about his personal feelings. This storyline ends up suffocating in its own ordinariness, which might have been the point.

It’s not until the film slows to a complete halt in the middle of its convenient and contrived conclusion that you realise you haven’t laughed much, if at all. You might also walk away remembering what a stunning film American Beauty was – if only by comparison.

Pictured: Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in Crazy, Stupid, Love.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Theatre Review: Tom Tom Crew

Tom Tom Crew. Directed by Scott Maidment. Ben Walsh (Musical Director), Shane Witt, Ben Lewis, Daniel Catlow, David Carberry, Jamie McDowell, Mali de Goey, Tom Thum and DJ Sampology (Sam Poggioli). Presented by Melbourne Festival and Strut & Fret Production House. Now playing upstairs at the Forum Theatre until Sunday 23 October.

In the grand tradition of Stomp and Tap Dogs but with generous lashings of thrillingly high-stakes, daredevil acrobatic abandon and Tom Thum’s simply astonishing beatboxing, Tom Tom Crew burst into life for the opening night performance of their Melbourne Festival season.

What it lacks in big-budget showbiz polish and razzle dazzle, Tom Tom Crew more than makes up for with its genuine, eager to please, backyard/garage band aesthetic. This is no over-produced big set-piece extravaganza. Instead, the Crew’s raw (almost next-door neighbourly) honesty, intoxicating smiles and personalities, passion, humour and talent comes strikingly to the fore – uniting and delighting their audience with a rare kind of high-energy performance euphoria.

These are well-disciplined, chilled, drilled and thoroughly engaging performers – whose camaraderie from their Flying Fruit Fly Circus training ground and years on the international touring circuit (the show was born at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2006 before travelling to London, Edinburgh, New York, Berlin and Montreal) has resulted in a tightly-knit ensemble that both personifies and exemplifies trust, risk, loyalty and precision.

Entirely lacking in pretension, Tom Tom Crew wins points for opting to keep it real – like busking boys in a local park showing off to their captivated admirers; and in the cluttered realm of circus spectaculars, this is the essence of the Crew’s theatrical torque. Trained at the famous Fruit Fly Circus, it’s not difficult to join the dots between the Crew’s childlike joy at tackling high-flying acrobatics with energetic leaps and bounds into flights of sheer breath-taking fantasy. Equal part circus and vaudeville, the pace rarely sags – and when it momentarily does, it is only to allow us (and them) to catch our breath.

If Ben Walsh’s drumming on a seemingly impossible number of plastic barrels is a worthy, gob-smacking showstopper, nothing could have prepared us for Tom Thum’s (pictured) beatboxing. Rarely, in the theatre, do we find ourselves in the situation of being unable to believe either our ears or our eyes – but this boy with a microphone is a beatboxing virtuoso (and a terrifically gifted graffiti artist as witnessed in one of the show’s very clever multimedia interactions). From a classic jazz set to the instantly recognisable beats and melodies of the late Michael Jackson (poignantly performed as a “tribute”), Tom Thum’s contribution defies description.

On opening night, the boys were entirely worthy of the unanimous and thunderous standing ovation that, in retrospect, was the very least we could bring to the party. Without a doubt, this will be the hottest Melbourne Festival ticket in town. Whatever you have to do to get your hands on a ticket – do it.

In memoriam: Steve Jobs

Rest in Peace Steve. Thank you for your vision, your perseverance, your belief – and for sharing your genius and unparalleled creative intelligence with us all. My world is so enriched because of what you achieved in your life and all the poorer today for your passing. Thank you. Bless you.

Image: Screengrab from the Apple homepage.

Film Review: The Lion King

The Lion King. Rated G. 89 minutes. Directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. Screenplay by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton.

Having stormed the box office when it was first released in 1994 (it is still the highest-grossing hand-drawn animation film ever made), Disney’s The Lion King is back in cinemas to captivate another generation while re-captivating those that first fell in love with it in the ‘90s.

Digitally modified for screening in 3D (an additional layer of ‘dimension’ has been added to the 2D original which delivers elements of the supreme artwork to the ‘so close I can almost touch it’ foreground), The Lion King has withstood the technological tampering to remain an enchanting rites of passage story.

With the birth of his cub Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), Mufasa (James Earl Jones) must ensure that his evil brother Scar (a perfectly sinister Jeremy Irons) understands that Simba must eventually assume his rightful place as the leader of the pride. Scar immediately joins forces with his henchmen – hyenas Shenzi (the brilliant Whoopi Goldberg) and Banzai (Cheech Marin) – to re-determine the course of the young cub’s destiny.

Certainly one of Disney’s darkest affairs (with the death of Mufasa giving even the death of Bambi’s mother a run for its money), The Lion King kicks into hyperdrive once the, now exiled, adult Simba (Matthew Broderick) meets the flatulent warthog Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella) and his theatrical companion Timon the meerkat (Nathan Lane). Timon and Pumbaa’s impromptu burlesque to distract the enemy hyenas (“Are ya achin’/for some bacon?”) is still a sensational example of Disney’s determination to entertain their adult fans as much as the younger ones.

Hans Zimmer’s (Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean) score is still as close as it is possible to be to the perfect accompaniment to all the colour and movement, while Elton John and Tim Rice’s songs each serve the story beautifully – but none more so than the spectacular The Circle of Life sequence that remains not only one of this film’s most memorable, but one of the finest opening sequences of any animated film ever.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.

Postscript: One of the many examples of how Timon and Pumbaa's famous hula song and dance act from The Lion King has achieved cult status can be watched here.