Well, as a sequel, it does not live up to the first one but is still good on its own.

This movie features a new type of heroism, an anti-violence type of heroism. It emphasises the power of love and the belief that "We Are One".

It has pleasant songs, special in their ways, though may not be as moving or remarkable as the ones in the original. I am particularly fond of "One Of Us", "My Lullaby" and "Love Will Find A Way".

Character development is more complex than the original.

Kiara is a typical rebellious teenager, much like Simba's youth. Later she grew even more mature than Simba himself and even managed to teach him something.

Zira looks more ferocious than cunning. She also has the build for agility, but I like her better than Scar. I like her personality and she merely looks better. I always believed that Zira has the voice of a feminist.

Nuka is a typical mommy's boy and perhaps a bit wacky (or retarded) much like Ed in the original.

Kovu looks and sounds weak in general, since I kept comparing him with Simba naturally since he is one of the main protagonists of this sequel. He is nothing near kingly.

Vitani is a cool character and at the end she switched sides.

The scenes are still quite colourful especially when the characters were singing "In Upendi" and "One Of Us".

It teaches us essential things about the world, unity and love.

I liked this sequel more than the original. It's not the best Disney movie out there, but it's one of Disney's best sequels.
The animation, soundtrack and new characters are all great.

If you liked the original (or even if you didn't), watch it.

The Romeo & Juliet ripoff, with all the teenage love and stuff, it's rather plain and overwhelmingly simple. Considering it's a sequel of a much more complex plot, it's quite disappointing.

All the thing with the Scar's followers doesn't make any sense, as there was not even a single lion that followed him in the first movie. But I do liked the new characters, and as far it's possible, the plot make good use of them. Luka it's amazing, and he make you laugh and sob. There's a piece of the movie on him.

Simba now is a grumpy guy, you almost don't see him smiling. His old pals Timon & Pumbaa now are his servants, and it's almost heartbreaking seeing him giving orders to them in a severe tone.

With the exception of "My Lullaby", I though the rest of the songs are boring and silly, specially "Upendi" - which I think it was ridiculous.

A movie that can be joyful in some extent, but it's dispensable. And unnecessary.

I will never be a big fan of Disney sequels. It just doesn't sit with me right that the Disney studios take any one of their movies that they are sure will attract an audience the second time around, put together a most likely inexperienced, underpaid crew, who will make up any crap story that will excite little children, but ruins the first movie, and make unimpressive backrounds, and characters. I just hate it.

But, as far as DTVs go, this one is at least in the top 3 for me(thats how bad DTVs are) The story is full of plot holes, but still entertaining. It gets dramatic and can be pretty funny, but when it is, you only get a chuckle. And I will say it...I don't want to...I actually...kind of...*gulp* liked the music. Yes its true and im ashamed of it. What can I say?! Some of it was catchy! All in All, from my point of view, it looks like someone working on this sequel actually cared about it, even though, they still came very much short.

I was entertained, but at the end of the movie, I just kind of shrugged. A fair try.

Definitely one of Disney's best DTV releases.
While this one follows the usual DTV formula (main character from first movie has offspring, offspring is headstrong like the parent and gets into trouble), it's nice to see Simba not reduced to a secondary character like Ariel and Lady were in the sequels to The Little Mermaid, and Lady and the Tramp. While the focus is on Simba's daughter, his role is crucial to the film. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Nala, whose lines in the film can be counted on one hand.
Though the animation is not quite as good as it was in the first film, it features some of the finest animation in a DTV, as well as one of the best soundtracks.
Even if you're not a fan of Disney's DTVs, this one is certainly worth checking out.

What a wonderful way to follow-up the Lion King!
This is the best Disney sequel ever, even though I, too, am not that big of a Disney sequel fan. The animation was breath-taking and looked more like it was supposed to debut in theaters. The story was a bit quick in my opinion. I mean, first there's the famous presentation of the cub heir to the throne, Princess Kiara. Next, she's a energy-filled child, eager to romp and play, like the kid that all of us were. Then, she learns important lessons from her proud papa, King Simba, about the phrase "We are one." Of course, if you were in Kiara'd situation, you would be confused too. But like all stories, Kiara's fateful encounter with the Outlands cub, Kovu, creates big problems. Then as all children do, they grow up. Kiara and Kovu meet again, with Kovu pretending to be a hero only to try and steal the throne from Simba, as Scar would have wanted. Without revealing too much more of this wonderful plot, a love blossoms between the princess and her vagabond that helps bring this to a stunning climatic scene that contains a few similar elements to the original. Since this is a Disney sequel, it has to contain songs. The rhythm and the beats of the various music were wonderful and added that African feel to the movie. Most of the songs did a great job of setting the mood of the situation, especially the Rafiki song, "Upendi" which was a fun song about the Swahili word for "love." It was a bit corny, but a cute song nonetheless as it helped Kiara and Kovu release their true feelings about each other's company.
There was one little problem though. Simba's character was different than the young king that had returned to his rightful place in the first movie. It seemed that since he was the king, he thought what he was doing was always for the best. WRONG. That comes and nips him in the butt a couple of times in the sequel. This is a meaner Simba than what I thought I would see. He'll make you angry during certain scenes, but in the end, he realizes that no one is perfect and that no one can be exactly like someone else, since this Simba is trying to follow in his daddy's paws.
This is such an outstanding sequel and should not be forgotten. Although it does have that one flaw in characterization, it still gets four stars from me!

It's a shame. This film had quite a lot going for it, but just didn't quite cut the mustard. Firstly, and importantly for me, I didn't have the 'Kimba rip-off' problems which I had with the original movie, so I _wanted_ it to be good, and in many respects it was. Probably most importantly this was the film which raised the bar for animation quality in DTV sequels. That's what most struck me about it at the time. For the first time we had a sequel that looked cinematic, not like a telemovie. Of course it wasn't quite in the same league as TLK. Kiara's 'airbrushed' look doesn't sit properly alongside some of the 'flat' looking animals (like the Rhinos), and the actual drawing, as opposed to the animation, isn't in the same class as the original (this is particularly evident when the fairly ordinary drawing, and the airbrushed effect are combined in some of Kiara's facial shots).

Despite being borrowed from 'Romeo and Juliet' (along with a couple of other Shakespearean references - there's even a line out of 'The Merchant of Venice'), the romance between Kiara and Kovu (keep wanting to call him 'Tofu') was a pretty solid source of dramatic tension, and the strongest element of the story. It's a shame it somehow never quite achieved its potential potency, and especially that it was deflated by that regrettable song segment introduced by Rafiki. I found the efforts by Nuka to please his evil mother quite emotionally potent, and again wish more had been done with that.

There were some other things which struck me as faults with the film. I already said that I didn't like Mufassa in the first movie. I don't like Simba in the second, either. He's consistently shown to have poor judgement, and you really have to wonder whether he deserves his job as leader.

Some writing problems: if Rafiki is determined to get Kiara and Kovu together, and the biggest obstacle to that is Simba's attitude, why doesn't he just damn well go and talk to him about it? Or break melons together in some cryptic manner or something? A second problem is more of what bothered me about TLK. I felt sympathy for Scar when I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to. Similarly I felt sympathy for the outcast lions being forced to live in the badlands, when, again, I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to. It just came across as another example of Simba being mean and not a very good ruler.

Timon and Pumba were ok when they were on screen, but frankly there didn't really seem to be any particularly good excuse for them even being in the movie.

The music is actually pretty decent for a DTV - not a lot worse or better than most of what Disney has put with their movies in the last 10 or 15 years.

Overall I've got a bit of a soft spot for Simba's Pride. It's not a great movie, but it proved that DTV sequels could be of high production quality, and not nescessarily outright disasters.

Still, for my money, it was the second sequel which finally hit its marks. A shame in a way that it took a comedy/parody for me to really throughly enjoy a Lion King film.

One of Disney's better sequals in both animation and story. However, this film is nowhere near as good as the original, but it does have a few good points.

I think of all the new characters that were introduced Vitani and Nuka were the most unique. Although I liked his design, Kovu had very little personality and Kiara was just obnoxious at times. What really bothered was the way they changed the old characters. Simba was overprotective, which would be understandable, but he lost all his good qualities he had in the original that made him loveable. Nala had a very minor role and she was nowhere near as strong as she was in the original. Timon and Pumbaa seemed to be side thought. Almost like the writers wrote the whole story about the lions then forgot about the duo and threw them in at the last minute.

The music was ok, but pretty bad compared to the first one. One song, Upendi, is one of the worst and most annoying songs I think I've ever heard. If they had cut that song out the movie would go up half a star! The score is pretty much non exsistant, what is there is bad. I do have to give them credit though. They managed to get the original cast back, which was nice.

The animation is fair. At the time it was the best seen in a dtv. It's almost comparable to the first tlk, but not quite. However there were some things that irked me. Everything was darker and not as crisp as the first. Everything in general looked darker and a litte off color. Simba's main lacked the nice detail it once had, Nala's eyes were changed and her chin was enlarged, Timon and Pumbaa looked a bit off in design and color. However the newer characters were pretty neat.

Now for the story. It had a 'just because someone looks different doesn't mean that we can't get along' type theme which was ok. They brought in the outlanders, Scar's former pride. Unfortunately they decided to go with the overused 'hero has a headstrong child'. So the story is ok, a little dull at times, but had enough twists and action scenes to keep up interest.

Overall it's a pretty good dtv. It's worth a couple rents, or if you are really into tlk maybe buy it.

Normally I'm not a fan of sequels, especially when they're of Disney movies. But Simba's pride was awesome. I was especially glad that they got a lot of old voices. The only reason that i saw it in the first place was because Jason Marsden was the voice of Kovu. Now I'm glad I did see it because I now own it and watch it occasionally. I suggest this to any Lion King fan.

Undeniably, The Lion King is a tough act to follow and although this film does make an admirable effort, I still thought it fell short. More disappointing is that I feel the sequel has some really good things going for it. The new characters such as Kiara, Kovu, Zira and Zira's underlings have qualities that could've made for a very interesting story... had they been given an interesting story to work with. What we do end up with is a weaker copy of the Lion King story crossed with Romeo & Juliet. Even the comic relief provided by Timon and Pumbaa seems to lack something of the spark that appeared in the original.

When it was released it was by far the best direct-to-video animation I had seen Disney produce and close to the quality to the original Lion King. Not earth-shattering but it carries the story reasonably well.

As for music, most of the songs wander the line between stale and just plain cheesy. Although they're better than some Disney's other direct-to-video releases, they're still not that great. The only original song that peaked my interest at all was Zira's "My Lullaby" which I thought was an interesting twist on her role as Kovu's mother. The other song I liked, "He Lives in You," I had heard before on the sequel to the Lion King soundtrack (not to be confused with the Lion King II soundtrack), "Rhythm of the Pride Lands" which I recommend to Lion King fans.