Disney’s current trend of making live-action remakes of
their most successful and enduring animated films has always felt a bit
pointless to me, and the quality of those remakes has not changed my mind. Alice
in Wonderland was a bizarre mess, Maleficent
was an interesting concept bungled in execution, and Cinderella was so
safe that its strange moments didn’t even leave a lasting impression. So, as you can imagine, I wasn’t exactly
pumped for The Jungle Book. But here’s the thing: it’s pretty good, and actually on
par with the original cartoon, believe it or not.
The basic premise hasn’t really changed since Rudyard
Kipling’s original short story compilation or the 1967 animated feature of the
same name. Mowgli is a human child
raised by wolves who must flee the jungle when the tiger Shere Kahn, fearful of
what Mowgli could do to him as a grown man, threatens his life. So begins a series of vignettes where Mowgli
encounters a hypnotic snake, a lazy but loveable bear, and an orangutan king bent
of possessing the secret of fire, among others. And
for the film’s first act, I wasn’t terribly impressed, mostly due to Mowgli’s
passive role in the narrative at that point and child actor Neel Sethi’s
inability to infuse much life into the character. The kid has physical acting and acrobatic chops,
but his line reading is atrocious, likely due to the fact that he is the only
human actor on screen at any time.
But eventually, the film started to win me over, primarily
due to its fantastic voice cast. Idris
Elba makes a calmly ominous Shere Kahn imposing yet rarely needs to
elevate his voice, and Christopher Walken as King Louie is surprisingly
unsettling, a vast departure from the animated film that not only mutes the racially
problematic aspects of the character but makes for one of the most tense scenes
of the film. I could go on about how the
other supporting roles are delivered excellently with their own unique twists,
but the real showstealer, though, is Bill Murray as Baloo, who encapsulates the
lazy and manipulative side of the character while delivering the best comedic
lines of the film. All of these
performances are made perfect by some of the most striking computer generated
animation put to film, somehow walking a line between photorealism and
anthropomorphic emotion that almost never dips into the uncanny valley.
Where the film falters is in its (likely producer-mandated)
need to adhere to the nostalgia template of the original cartoon in certain
instances. Doing more to make Mowgli an
active character in early scenes would have made him instantly more relatable,
yet the play by play movement through famous setpieces (the confrontation
between Shere Kahn and the wolves, Mowgli’s capture by Kaa, etc.) takes
precedent over storytelling, at least until Baloo steals the show and Mowgli’s
relationship with the bear gives him some definition. Furthermore, the musical pieces are a mixed
bag; where Baloo’s lackadaisical rendition of “The Bare Necessities” feels
perfect, the high energy swing of “I Wanna Be Like You” feels tonally discordant coming
out of the larger, more threatening King Louie’s stern mouth.
That said, The Jungle
Book is immensely entertaining, a testament to director John Favreau’s
immortal place in the age of CGI.
The action scenes are memorable and exciting, the voice cast is
impeccable, and the more distasteful aspects of the film are minor in light of how
much it simply does right. This is the
live action adaptation that should set the template for Disney moving
forward. Let’s hope they get the
message.
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