Man Cub

The Jungle Book

When I think of Walt Disney Pictures, being of a certain generation, I think of their classic animated films and I don’t mean the computer-animated films. Movies such as The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and my all-time favorite Pinocchio. Disney produced a sizable library of hand drawn animated classics that I am sure have been staples of many of your childhoods. Well with new technology and apparently a shortage of original thought, Disney has decided to remake quite a few of these classics into live action films. This slowly crept up on us with Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland, Angelina Jolie’s “I am woman, hear me roar” flick Maleficent, and now Jon Favreau’s vision of The Jungle Book. Is it just me or is this just laziness? I’m not sure but here is my opinion of this year’s trip through the jungle with the man-cub Mowgli.

The Story: For those of you that have never actually seen ANY retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s collection of stories, this outing stays closer to that of Walt Disney’s 1967 animated classic. This and the 1967 classic follow the story of Mowgli (Neel Sethi), an orphaned boy that has been raised by wolves of the Indian jungle, and his dangerous and sometimes fun filled journey out of the jungle. Mowgli must leave the jungle in fear of death from the terrifying tiger Shere Khan (voice by Idris Elba Beasts of No Nation). Along the way Mowgli is introduced to a few colorful characters and others no so colorful. The interesting aspect of this film, however, is that director Jon Favreau introduces a few characters from Kipling’s stories as well.

The Good: While a lot of other of my peers found Sethi’s performance inspiring, to which I agree he wasn’t horrible, I has more impressed with the special effects of the film. The animals and locations where strewn together so seamlessly that I really thought they were on location in India with real talking animals. From the flow of their fur to the random twitching of their ears, the CGI animals were quite life-like and the real heroes of this film. I will tip my hat to Sethi, a ten year old that basically has to play the biggest game of bluff of his young life. Sethi has to get the audience to believe that he is really talking to these animals and I actually believed him. The voice cast was superb as well starting with Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) as Bagheera, the black panther and Bill Murray (Ghostbusters) as the lovable Baloo. Coupled with the amazing Elba, I truly believe that if Favreau did not get these three characters (Bagheera, Baloo, and Shere Khan) perfect he was going to lose his audience and the movie would fail. These are essential characters to this story and these three hit it out of the park.

The Bad: I touched on this in the opening paragraph; I believe these remakes to be pure negligence on the part of Disney and this film’s writers. This story is basically the same from the animated classic with a few changes here and there, but when all said and done the same story. It is even riddled with the same songs. WHY? This to me reminds me of the 1998 Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) remake of Psycho and he decided to shot his movie shot for shot with Hitchcock’s original masterpiece. That, to me, is such a waste of money. I just think that if you are going to reimagine/remake a movie like The Jungle Book, why not make it your own and dig deeper into Kipling’s stories and find something original to work with.

The Verdict: I enjoyed the film on a nostalgic level and was very much swept up into the digital world that Favreau and company create. Young Neel Sethi solidifies this world with his believable performance of a boy in the company of talking animals. I just think that Disney can spend their money a little wiser and create new films for families to enjoy instead of retelling the same stories over and over again.

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