Thanks for the memories!

Powerful

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

First off I want to say two things about this topic. One, I saw this in the cinemas with my family when I was little and I enjoyed it a lot. And secondly when I'm doing this review, I am not going to compare this film to the 1956 film because i have not seen that version.So after a long time, I decided, why not, let's give the king and I (1999) a try. In the first 20 minutes, I instantly turned off the film, finding it funny as hell but really thinking what the hell at the same time. The next day, I watched the other half which bored me to death. After seeing the whole film being much older now, I think of it in a totally different way. As a kid, I liked it. But now more grown up, I think this film was animated garbage and it was awful. Very rotten as well. It was so messy. And here's why: First, I think the story is far too simple and I wish they could have gone into great detail throughout the film. I also think that most of the characters are unbelievably stupid, annoying, laughable and dull in every scene. There definitely wasn't much going on with these characters that I just couldn't care about them after wards. The King is like an anti-action would be hero who continually blab-bas on repeating some of the same crap: "WHAT, WHAT, WHAT!". Seriously, and even the main villain was cheap. He was just there sneaking and running around trying to scheme his little plan. His objective was stupid as hell. There were a lot of stupid moments as well.Some of these stupid moments consist throughout but I think the most silliest was when this dragon tries to attack this woman, her boy, a monkey and a crew on their boat. The crew and all have no idea what to do until the mother and her boy start whistling. The dragon then disappears into smoke. Really dumb and quite laughable. I know this is a kid's cartoon but come on, there could have been a better way to kill that thing.The sing alongs also don't save it and the music throughout could have been so much more. It was merely the only decent part of the film but because of messed up characters, story, bad moments and plot gaps, the music is poorly contrasted with random scenes and it becomes a shamble which doesn't even get the film to it's full peak. And the thing which really bugged me throughout was the animation and change of scenes.For example in one scene, we see the main villain and this fat guy who is his assist are seen talking near a bridge. At first we see the main villain with his normal clothing. That being a red shirt and some shorts. And then quickly in the next shot, he is seen wearing his suit and then it cuts to another shot where a glass eye piece full off of his head and then another quick shot flies in quickly and we see that he hasn't even put it on. It's just there on him. There are many other poor animation tactics which go on about throughout this film, but I'm not going to go into it.The only two things I thought were done OK is these two moments with the main villain and the king. If you've seen this garbage where the villain is whipped on the bum by the panther at the end of the king and his discussion and the part with the villain telling the king about the so called teacher leading the kids outside the palace. They were the only parts in the entire film I thought that weren't done badly. Although that is my only positive notion for it, doesn't change my mind that I didn't like this film at all.I just don't believe it myself that I watched this in the cinemas when it came out, and I liked it. Now going back to it just recently, I suddenly think it's one of the worst films I have seen in quite some time. The other thing which was weird throughout was that I found this film hilariously dumb and stupid. I mean I just made fun of this film after the first ten minutes. And then the middle sunk lower and then the ending was predictable and went absolutely nowhere. I mean throughout nothing exciting happened either. It was just a very boring film.It's pure animated garbage which should be avoided.1.5/10

I have both versions on video, and I'll admit the 1956 version is much better. I had mixed feelings on this version, but I hated most of the plot changes. Many important bits that worked so well in the 1956 version were changed and replaced with hackneyed plot-holes. The saving grace is the songs, and the singing is passable. The best is Christianne Noll, and Barbara Streisand singing in the end credits was a treat. Back to the bad. The voice talents were OK, but there were a lot of dodgy accents. Miranda Richardson does well, and her character animation is good too. Martin Vidnovic was trying to replicate Yul Brynner, and in no way did he succeed. Adam Wylie has a false English accent, that was shown when he was singing, because his American accent was heard. Ian Richardson is a really good actor, but I was expecting more from him. He had lots of really good lines, but his delivery just felt a bit OTT. The worst character was Master Little, who was funny for only ten minutes, and then the occurring joke about teeth wore thin far too early. Don't get me started on the animals. they were cute at first, but they served no purpose at all to the plot, especially Moonshee. As for the animation, most of it was good, but why on earth did they animate a sea dragon and moving statues that were only there for a couple of seconds, I didn't get it! As for the romance between Tuptim and the Prince it was so unnecessary, and the romance between Anna and the king was painfully underdeveloped. And why did they change the ending? The ending in the 1956 version was so poignant, and this one was pointless. In conclusion, only watch it if you haven't seen the fantastic Yul Brynner version, otherwise you'll be disappointed. 5/10 Bethany Cox

People, this is a cartoon. The comment from the site got me looking further. Dear oh dear. What did they expect. Thank goodness some thought it OK. 1999? That late.. and I still thought Anna was based on Julie Andrews.. Miranda Richardson, OK. As we in the u.k. have had a recent ad on TV with the Julie Andrews version of Getting to Know You on it, something I didn't even know she had done, yes she has, who could mistake those sliding notes, on a soundtrack with Ben Kinglsey apparently. The company admitted to me in a return mail it got the clip from i-tunes? Good grief, an advertising agency uses an almost unknown clip from i-tunes. Well, I'm not even a third through the cartoon and its OK.. I never have expectations, in fact I'm usually scared to watch a sequel in case it doesn't live up, but.. whats not to like about THIS cartoon. Warner Brothers used to make a different version of.. another cartoon character, than the original, and one could always tell. Why cant I remember,Bugs? It was long ago. I should know, I'm a film buff. Someone said ideas from the stage show were copied, oh surprise? COME ON.. get those eyes/noses out of expectations gained from other formats... THIS IS a good cartoon.. has licence to do nearly anything they wanted it to. Maybe the same artist drew Anna as did Mary Poppins somewhere along the line. SO WHAT? Take it for what it is.

That was what I told my parents after I saw the movie. EVERYTHING was a cliché.The Characters were clichés. Let's see, you've got The Noble But Naïve Man-In-Charge, The Evil Scheming Second-In-Command, The Evil Scheming Second-In-Command's Convenient Toady, the Know-It-All Lady (White, of course), the Witless Kid: clichés, stereotypes, cookie-cutter characters ALL.The plot line was as predictable as a paint-by-numbers, connect-the-dots, or a jigsaw puzzle, except more so.As for the romance, you couldn't get more predictable than that. Set apart by class, family disapproval... again, complete cliché.Please, do me a favor. Surprise me. Have the king best the white lady once in a while. Have HER show some interest in what is right about Thai culture, rather than trying to correct it. Come to think of it, this movie was rather racist, with the white lady teaching the "foreigners" how to behave properly.The animation, well, it was comparable to animated films in days gone by... something in the 60s or earlier, to be exact. But 1999? Give me a BREAK.By the way, I think this movie was banned in Thailand because it made the King look ridiculous (A serious social sin over there, and I'm not being sarcastic or mocking). I don't blame them one bit.