"Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase. Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze."
I can't seem to get that song out of my head after seeing The Lion King at the movie theater this week. It brought back all the fond memories I have of seeing the movie for the first time and I came home and dug around my dusty storage boxes to find my original The Lion King VHS tape. I joked on Facebook that now I only needed to find a relic VCR to play it on!
The original The Lion King came out in 1994 when I was in high school. Back then, it seemed like everyone in my friend group had their favorite animated film that they gravitated to and then became identified with all things having to do with that film. One friend loved Beauty and the Beast. Another friend couldn't get enough of Aladdin. So whenever we passed the Beauty and the Beast display in the window of the Disney Store or an Aladdin song came on the radio, all the attention would turn to whoever was associated with that movie. For me, that movie was The Lion King. I loved the movie's themes, the stirring songs, and how human the characters were even though they were talking animals.
I think the movie also started my love of Africa and when I traveled there a few years ago I swear we saw what looked like Pride Rock! I couldn't put a Disney photo on this blog post so instead I went with a lion photo that I took in South Africa. Maybe it's Mufasa alive again?!