The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book was not my favorite animated Disney movie when I was a kid. Sure I enjoyed it like I enjoyed almost every animated Disney movie when I was a kid, but it just didn’t go down in my absolute favorites like so many of the other animated films did. So when I heard that they were making a live action Jungle Book, my reaction was a shrug.

Sure I’m interested in almost anything Disney puts out because they’ve proven themselves to be a solid company that knows how to put out quality movies. But I wasn’t jumping out to my car to see this movie.

And then I started hearing news of the production of this movie. Trailers came out and I became more and more interested. I don’t think I ever got to the point where I was first in line to see this movie on opening day, but I saw this movie as a movie I was interested in seeing in 2016.

And then yesterday I told myself that if I didn’t see it on my day off, I wasn’t going to end up seeing it.

The Jungle Book follows the story of a young boy named Mowgli (played by Neel Sethi). Mowgli grew up in the jungle, raised by Wolves and watched over by a Panther named Bagherra (voiced by Ben Kingsley) who was the one who found him when he was younger alone in the jungle.

During the dry season, a truce is called among all the animals in order for all the animals to have access to water and Mowgli and the wolves go to this truce. However, when they get there, a Tiger named Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) shows up and says, “I want that kid dead!”. And as you eventually figure out, Shere Khan is really the most intimidating antagonist I have seen in a long time. When he says he wants a kid dead, you obviously don't want Mowgli dead, but you know things are not going to be good when Shere Khan doesn't get his way. 

This forces Mogli to leave his wolf family (main ones voiced by Giancarlo Esposito and Lupita Nyongo) with Bagherra and the Panther will bring him back to the man village where he will be safe. The rest of the movie is the journey to the man village where Mogli meets a whole cast of familiar characters and animals like Elephants, the seductive Boa Constrictor Kaa (voiced by Scarlett Johanasson), the giant monkey King Louie (voiced by Christopher Walken), and of course a bear named Baloo (voiced by Bill Murray) who becomes Mowgli’s best friend.

The funny part about watching this movie is the nostalgic recall I had towards the original animated film. The fact of the matter is, The Jungle Book animated movie was not really a cohesive story as much as it was a bunch of episodes of different animals Mowgli finds himself in. I believe that’s basically what the original book is anyway, so creating a linear narrative is a little bit difficult. The Jungle Book itself is more of an Odyssey story where its not about Mowgli getting to the village that is the important part, its more about the journey.

And it’s a fun journey.

Right up front, the obvious praise this movie is going to get is that this movie is just down right gorgeous. The thing to remember with this movie is that everything, and I mean everything, with the exception of the boy who plays Mowgli, is CGI. The environment, every single animal, everything is CGI.

And if you didn’t know that going into the movie, that may shock you because it looks really down right fantastic. Even the animals have moments where it’s a little bit difficult to believe that they aren’t real. And if you did know that before you went into the film, its becomes a really fun experience watching it knowing that it was all filmed on a green screen stage in California.

But the visuals in my mind were going to look amazing no matter what. You don’t have to watch the movie to enjoy the visual, there is really enough of it in the trailers.

How are the characters? They’re pretty good.

First off, the kid who plays Mowgli I have to give a lot of credit. He’s a young kid imagining everything around him and while some of his lines were delivered in a way that you would expect a kid his age to deliver them, I never felt like he wasn’t in the moment and it never felt like he wasn’t out there in the jungle with the animals. I really hope this kid gets work in the future because he did a pretty good job and I’d like to see how his career develops after this movie.

But what's better is that this Mowgli is a smart character. He's not just the protagonist, he's smart and while he was born in the jungle, you can tell he's utilizing his brains to solve his problems. The animated movie painted Mowgli as just this annoying kid. I believe that this Mowgli could actually survive in the jungle based on how smart he is. 

The voice acting in this movie is really well done and really well casted. Originally when I saw the voice cast for this movie I thought Ben Kingsley was going to play Shere Khan and I thought that sounded awesome. And then when it turned out that he was playing Bagherra and Idris Elba was playing Sher Khan, I got even more excited because both those castings just sounded perfect and they really were. Shere Khan as both a voice and a presence was just down right terrifying and imposing.

If you’ve read this blog before you’ll know that I’m not the biggest fan of Bill Murray, but when I heard he was cast as Baloo I said, “That is perfect”. And once again, it was. Like I said, each voice cast just fit perfectly with their character and the animal design.

The only slight exception I think might be Christopher Walken as King Louie. I didn’t necessarily dislike the casting or the performance, I just think it was a little more apparent that it was Walken just being Walken. I hadn’t heard King Louie talk until the movie and I just heard Christopher Walken more than I heard a huge ape. He didn’t do a bad job, he just was my least favorite.

This might be a pretty short review because honestly The Jungle Book is a pretty simple film and it doesn’t need a lot of analysis or critique. The movie did a pretty good job at creating its own narrative and didn’t necessarily bank too heavily on the nostalgia. That being said, there was a lot of nostalgia I had for this movie and it was fun to see it come to a (semi) live action adaptation. There’s no cliff hanger ending at the end of this film but it has a pretty open ending and it could open up to a sequel, something that I would definitely see.

Am I raving about this movie? No. I think it’s a movie a lot of people will enjoy because it’s a fun journey and enjoyable for kids and adults. I don’t think it’ll go down as one of my favorite movies of the year but it was fun. That’s the best description. Fun.

Disney has a pretty long list of movies they’re going to be making in the future that are live action adaptations of their animated films. The Jungle Book is a good sign of the direction they’re headed. I really liked their adaptation of Cinderella and I’m over the mood excited for Beauty and the Beast down the road. As long as they do more movies like this and Cinderella and stay away from films like the Alice and Wonderland films, I think the future of these films is pretty bright.

But what did you think of The Jungle Book? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposiumas well as give me your requests for future reviews. If you follow me you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!