Last weekend I had the privilege of seeing Disney’s latest feature film, The Jungle Book, a remake of the 1967 animated film.
For those of you worried about the film ruining your childhood, don’t be. Every character is full of life and personality, and the new film spends time developing each of the characters and giving them reasons for their actions. In particular, Sher Khan gets a lot of build up for why he hates man so much and why he is so determined to kill Mowgli. The songs were not as good as the original, but they tried to take them in a different direction to avoid competition, which worked well for the most part. They also made some changes to the ending, which I felt was much more fulfilling than the original, but I won’t spoil.
Neel Sethi stole the show as Mowgli, literally acting without any other actors, but instead using only puppets or people simply reading lines. Not to mention he was working almost entirely on green screen. His performance was astounding. At times it is obvious he’s a new, child actor, but it fit with Mowgli’s childish attitude and so didn’t distract from the story-telling. In terms of the rest of the cast, most of whom only delivered voices, I was blown away. Ben Kingsley made a phenomenal Bagheera, Bill Murray surprised me by delivering a great Baloo, Idris Elba was an intimidating Sher Khan, and Scarlet Johansson gave me chills as Kaa. The diversity of the cast certainly helped give life to the performance, even if we never truly saw them.
The film’s largest problem was the casting of Christopher Walken and the overall choices made about King Louie. Walken’s acting was bad. His singing was worse. Honestly, I cannot understand why he was cast, but that aside, perhaps he could have worked if they’d kept to a specific tone for King Louie. He’s introduced as a terrifying, large ape, who, like a mob boss, sits in the dark while the other monkeys do his bidding. Then, about five minutes into his interaction with Mowgli, the scene turns silly and comedic because he starts singing, only to return to dark when Louie tries to kill Mowgli. If they’d made “I Wanna Be Like You” a darker song, I think the scene would have moved smoothly and Walken’s bad acting wouldn’t have been so obvious.
Lastly, I want to talk about the film’s CGI. If you’ve seen Avatar or Life of Pi, this film is right along up there. The movement of each of the animals was spot on (take it from someone who is best friends with a zookeeper), and they looked so realistic at times I forgot I was looking at computer images. The action of each animal was so natural, I can’t imagine how much time the creators spent watching footage of the real ones. All I can truly say is it was gorgeous, and you have to see it yourself to understand.
Go and see The Jungle Book, I promise, you won’t regret it.
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