I really am a big fan of both Glenn Close and especially Patrick Stewart, but Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole are just too tough an act to follow. While both performances are fine, you just don't get the sensation of tired antagonism from these two as you did O'Toole and Hepburn. For myself, the supporting cast could not hold a candle to the original as well. Again, when you've got Anthony Hopkins and Christopher Dalton in the original, this version just doesn't hold up. In the '68 version, you are on an emotional roller coaster of emotion with each characters victories and defeats (which seems to happen every other paragraph). This isn't a bad film, and if the original never existed I'd be satisfied watching it, but the original does exist and in doing so renders this film somewhat watered down in comparison.
Review of The Lion in Winter
