Roger Allers gave animated family drama weight without forgetting its pleasures. We value his patience with drawings and performances, but the lessons can be heavy-handed, and Open Season shows how little visual invention can do for thinly written characters.
Fi1m perspective
In The Lion King (1994), we have time to look at the landscape without waiting for the next joke. Roger Allers and co-director Rob Minkoff give it that time, helped by Chris Sanders’s production design, which makes the scenery seem to continue beyond the frame. We were moved by the warmth of the family relationships, because the expressive animation and voices make the characters worth caring about. This is Allers at his most persuasive as a director, patient enough to let a family audience feel something before explaining it.
His route to directing ran through story work, from Oliver & Company (1988) to Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992). He was head of story on Beauty and the Beast, whose tenderness we find earned despite the comic bustle around it. These were collective achievements, and a story credit cannot tell us which moment belongs to whom. Nor were all the results equally satisfying: the passive hero of Oliver & Company keeps the film slight, while Aladdin has a romance too thin to compete with its Genie.
His directing debut, The Lion King, also exposes a weakness: lessons about responsibility can become lectures. The animation has already persuaded us to take the family drama seriously. Hans Zimmer’s score presses the point until simple feelings start to sound ceremonial. Allers and Minkoff deserve credit for the seriousness, but they could have trusted the performers more.
That problem is preferable to the one in Open Season (2006), which Allers co-directed with Jill Culton. The animation is lively, and Billy Connolly supplies some useful comedy, but Boog and Elliot never become an enjoyable pair. The affection the directors aim for cannot compensate for characters who struggle to hold our attention. It is a disappointing move into broad adventure comedy from a filmmaker whose strongest work depends on relationships we care about.
Writing and directing Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (2014), he turned to an anthology, joining contributions from different animators with a framing story. It was another use for the story-building skills that had occupied so much of his earlier work. Start with The Lion King for his directing, and forgive it the occasional lecture.
Biography
Roger Allers (29 June 1949 – 17 January 2026) was an American director, writer, animator and storyboard artist. He co-directed the 1994 Disney animated feature The Lion King with Rob Minkoff.
Allers contributed to the story of Aladdin (1992) and served as head of story on Beauty and the Beast (1991). He also worked on earlier Disney projects including The Little Mermaid (1989) and Oliver & Company (1988). He wrote the book for the stage adaptation of The Lion King, which opened on Broadway in 1997.
Later credits include directing the Sony animated film Open Season (2006) and the short The Little Matchgirl (2006).
