The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 93% with an average score of 8.40/10, based on 130 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Emotionally stirring, richly drawn, and beautifully animated, "The Lion King" stands tall within Disney's pantheon of classic family films." It also ranked 56th on their "Top 100 Animation Movies". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 88 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade on an A+ to F scale.