(CNN) Anticipating a bountiful box-office feast, "The Lion King" deviates sparingly from the beloved 1994 original, for better and worse. The result is a polished and satisfying film, yet one that conspicuously feels even more like a consumer product than most Disney revivals of its animated classics.

Part of that, perhaps inevitably, stems from the absence of human characters. The realistic appearance of the animals thus retains an animated texture, much like "The Jungle Book" -- director Jon Favreau's first successful foray into the studio's animation-update business, which at least had a human kid at its core.

The total immersion into a world of talking animals differs from the likes of "Aladdin," "Beauty and the Beast" or "Cinderella." Without a human component, there's little to differentiate the redo from the animation that inspired it, making this latest trip into the vaults -- as beautifully realized as it is -- less a "live-action remake" than simply another animated take, one that comes with advantages balanced by drawbacks.

On the plus side, the lovingly rendered lions, hyenas and other assorted fauna have more edge to them, bringing a fierceness, grit and genuine majesty to the action sequences. It's like one of those "Planet Earth" documentaries, except for, you know, the songs and dialogue.

In the negative column, the characters lose some of the expressiveness associated with traditional animation and its anthropomorphized designs, more of an issue in the early going than as momentum builds toward the climax.

Read More