The Jungle Book (’16 review)

3 outta 5

The Jungle Book is yet another of Disney’s recent foray into live action remakes of its extensive back catalogue of animated features. Initially, there were twists to the storylines like Alice in Wonderland or Maleficent.  Lately, Disney’s recent spate of remaking classics like Cinderella, this movie, and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast have basically settled for straight recreations.  Directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Made), Jungle Book is a truly impressive technical achievement with great scenes and visual splendour.  It can’t quite overcome the sense of “the same thing as before, but live action” of Disney’s recent redux craze but the movie looks so darn great that it gets a pass.  

Raised in the wild jungle, human boy Mowgli (Neel Sethi), runs with a pack of wolves, even though he’s quite different from them.  Unfortunately for him, the fierce tiger, Shere Khan (Idris Elba) wants the tiny human gone from his realm and threatens dangerous death to everyone.  Despite the protests of Mowgli’s “mother”, Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o), the boy volunteers to leave with the black panther, Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), guiding the way.   But Khan is looking for the boy and Mowgli’s only hope may come from a lazy, talkative, scheming bear, Baloo (Bill Murray).      

While director Favreau keeps putting Mowgli in grave peril, and it certainly looks spectacularly treacherous, there’s always the sense Mowgli going to be okay and that’s simply due to the Disney brand.  Also, this is the third Disney attempt at The Jungle Book and, by now, audiences know how it plays out.  There’s the original ‘60s movie, which this takes many of its cues from, a rightfully forgotten ‘90s live action version, and this hybrid of live action and animation.   There are two songs here but happily the hummable classic “Bear Necessities” gets an extremely fun reprise with Murray.   The other song is headlined by Christopher Walken as a giant ape King Louie who warbles about how he wants to be like Mowgli.  Walken’s makes up for a near tone-deaf delivery with exuberance.  Since King Louie would think he’s a great singer and nobody would tell him otherwise, it kind of makes sense.  Probably much like Walken himself.   

Cribbed from the original is a scene where Mowgli is entranced by a snake with kaleidoscope eyes.  It is the best scene in this movie as the giant snake Kaa, voiced by Scarlet Johansson with a copious amount of seductive hissing, lulls Mowgli into a trance.   It’s awesome how slowly the snake unfurls, seeming like a threat far away as audio bounces all over the place.  This leads into Kaa relating Mowgli’s origin in a dream-like state, which then reveals just how tightly Kaa has wrapped herself around him as he listened.          

The voice cast is stellar, helping sell the initially off-putting notion of seeing photorealistic animals chatting like humans.  As the leader of the pack, Akela (Giancarlo Esposito aka Gus Fring from “Breaking Bad”) gets to sternly say things and has a fantastic bit with Khan where they discuss Mowgli’s fate.  The interesting thing about that scene is that it’s framed like nature photography of animals sunning themselves on a rock and staring forward until one of them does something unbelievable.  Walken’s giant ape is introduced as simply a hand hovering out of the darkness, gesturing his every word until Louie reveals himself.  Most of Nyong’o’s role as Raksha is growling about protecting her boy but Nyong’o does it well.   Murray’s Baloo not only kind of looks like Murray, he’s a perfect choice for the lackadaisical bear.  One of the better scenes is when Baloo convinces Mowgli to steal honey, leading to a very funny sequence of Mowgli hanging precariously as Baloo encourages Mowgli to go at it more vigorously as the boy is attacked by bees.  A standout is Elba as Khan, dripping menace with every line.  Kingsley as Bagheera gets in quite a bit of different emotionally toned line deliveries. As basically the only human in the movie, Sethi has big responses to fit into the world and he carries the movie effectively, which is a feat considering how many FX epics have collapsed under a weak child actor like Will Smith’s kid in After Earth.

The real star of the movie is the astounding visual FX with animals that look real except they can talk and emote. Favreau delivers a beautifully framed movie that recalls the original animated feature.  While 3D has been a bit of a superfluous add on recently, Jungle Book has some of the most immersive 3D in a long time.  However, once the visual trickery wears off, the story has to carry the film.  While it has a lot of good set-pieces, it’s missing momentum driving the narrative.   Mowgli sort of bumbles from one incident to another until the flick ends. 

Honestly, the best movie Disney put out this year involving animals and tolerance fables is easily Zootopia.  But The Jungle Book isn’t bad.  In fact, in places it’s downright stirring. This doesn’t try much of anything new for the Jungle Book story but it is still really entertaining and has style in every frame.