My Lion King Forum

I wanted to ask, what in TLK 3 in your opinion more: comedy or drama? What dominates in this film? When I say "drama", I mean that the film tells about the feelings and relationships of people.
I understand that this film has both: there's a lot of humor, but there are events that make us think about the deeper things.

I will have to say that it is far more comedy than drama. And really, for the most part, in my opinion it is a rather poor comedy. That isn't to say that there are not good scenes in 1 1/2 that are good, but overall it doesn't stand up as a comedy, and is trying to be funny too much to be drama.

There is no doubt that the comedy outweighs the drama in the film. However, it depends on how you define what's full-on comedic and full-on dramatic because there are scenes like the tunnel-digging climax and Timon leaving the colony where there was a mixture of both.

The dramatic scenes (in my opinion) are the hyenas' attack on the meerkat colony, the aftermath of the attack, Timon's decision to leave the colony, the "Friends stick together to the end" scene, Timon and Pumbaa arguing over whether to help Simba, Timon and Pumbaa making up in the desert, the ending portion of the climax where Ma thinks Timon is dead. I'm not sure if Timon bringing his colony into the jungle can be defined as drama, but if you define drama as the "feelings and relationships" of the characters, then it counts.

All the comedic scenes (in my opinion) are most of the theater scenes, the "Everything the light touches" parody, the "Circle of Life" parody, Timon knocking down the animal tower, Timon and Pumbaa in the Elephant Graveyard, both of them in Scar's lair, the stampede, cub Simba waking up Timon, the snail slurping contest, the hot tub scene, Timon and Pumbaa trying to break up Simba and Nala, Rafiki "helping" Timon, and Timon and Pumbaa stalling time for Ma and Uncle Max during the climax.

Other scenes were either musical numbers ("That's All I Need", "Diggah Tunnah" reprise) and exposition ("Diggah Tunnah", Uncle Max teaching Timon sentry duty).

By my estimates, there were eight dramatic scenes, and thirteen comedic scenes. So, the movie is more comedic than dramatic.

Comedy, and I'm totally fine with it. I LOVE comedy and this movie. It's perfect.

Yeah - comedy. The whole focus on those 'jokesters' T & P already set it up to be more comic based. And with the whole spoofing moments from the original film and the whole set-up with the cinema, etc. - the more dramatic aspects seemed to be played down by that.

While I'll agree that this film has more comedy than drama, the dramatic scenes of the film are Not powerless (and a good ways away from it).

Enough thought was put into them by the creators such that when you actually look at this film as a whole, they can't be discounted that easily.

The conflict that Timon deals directly with his colony after the hyena raid, for example, and all the way through the part when he's with Ma and expresses his desire to find a new home of his own to her, until leaving, is all a significant aspect of the film that cannot be ignored unless as mentioned above, you're not looking at the film as a whole.

It seems to me that Disney itself is at fault on this because the actual scenes of the film (not the movie theater ones) don't start out with Timon and Pumbaa to begin with, as they had promoted/advertised. Only Timon here.

Though, the general genre definition of what would define drama in a film is emotional, conflict, unexpected and/or exciting events shown from it. Not necessarily only because of relationships.

Such a great topic. It's a fine mix of both. Although the comedy is more dominant, the dramatic scenes are endearing. Definitely not powerless, as mentioned by Timon the great.

The comedy is one that relies on the magic of Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella as a duo. Timon and Pumbaa were given to them in the first place because they impressed "The Lion King" producers when they came in and auditioned (originally for the hyenas). Plus they have been friends since the late 1970's so their banters always come across as natural in "The Lion King" movies.

A lot of the comedic lines were improvised, actually. I'm interested to see how much of "1 1/2" were improvised and also "Simba's Pride" but a few dialogues from the first movie came from Nathan and Ernie themselves and the producers enjoyed them so much they decided to put in those lines (like the hula scene). Going to look at the DVD bonus features for "1 1/2" for some fun facts behind the scenes.