I just watched this movie and I can tell you I was cringing through the whole thing. It's a cute movie... but it's so much of a rip off of the original and the screne writing and voice acting killed it for me.
They basically turned Nala into Sarabi, Kiara into an over glorified "princess" type character I've seen in so many movies, and destroyed Zazu as a character. It didn't help that they gave more scene time to Rafiki, which seemed to have taken away from the mystique of the original.
Now, I've been keeping an open mind through the whole thing thinking, "Maybe it'll get better. Maybe this will all be worth it if they don't do too many typical things." I was wrong. Any 14 year old could have written this movie.
Now all that bashing aside. It's to too terrible. But ti's still very typical and predictable. I'll definitely watch it again when I need my Lion King fix... AFTER I watch the first one, of course.
LOL Let the flame wars begin!