Review: The Jungle Book

The story of a young boy named Mowgli (Neel Sethi) who is raised in the jungle adopted by wolves, protected by the panther Bagheera (voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley) who hopes to take the boy back to humankind. Circumstances see the boy temporarily falling into company with lazy, good-natured, but cunning bear Baloo (voiced by Bill Murray). Meanwhile, there is the fearsome tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) who holds the entire animal kingdom in fear, and wants to kill the boy.

I really like Disney’s 1967 animated version of the Rudyard Kipling classic, but it’s definitely a second-tier Disney animated ‘classic’ (“Alice in Wonderland”, “One Hundred and One Dalmatians”, “Cinderella”), rather than one of my favourites (“Pinocchio”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Robin Hood”, “Peter Pan”). This 2016 flick from director Jon Favreau (the terrible “Iron Man” flicks, the OK “Elf”) and screenwriter Justin Marks (atoning for the infamously bad “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”) is more in keeping with the animated Disney film, rather than Kipling’s novel or the appallingly stiff 1994 live-action atrocity Disney later churned out. I’m not sure whether it’s better than the 1967 film, but it’s at least pretty much its equal. Like the 1967 film there’s a couple of dead spots and Neel Sethi doesn’t make Mowgli all that much more interesting than his animated counterpart (though thankfully he’s not cloying or irritating either), but on the whole this is really enjoyable stuff.

Despite the presence of young actor Sethi, the film is almost exclusively CGI, including the landscapes and for the most part it looks absolutely sensational and fairly photo-realistic. The scenery in particular is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and the rest looks close enough to seamless for my mind. The music score by John Debney (“Gunmen”, “End of Days”, “Iron Man 2”) is really strong, too. I won’t say I was entirely emotionally engaged in the story at all times, but the 1967 film didn’t do that for me either. It was all about the animals, in that one, and they were great. I honestly thought this was gonna be another unconvincing CGI-fest ala “Jumanji”, but visually, this film knocks it out of the park and the story is solid enough.

The voice casting is a bit of a mixed bag, something the 1967 version got perfect. On the plus side, Sir Ben Kingsley is a perfect Bagheera, and the late Garry Shandling more briefly is funny as a porcupine. Christopher Walken is charmingly disarming as King Louie, whom he portrays as kind of a hip but menacing gangster crossed with a little Col. Kurtz. He isn’t exactly a sterling singer, but he’s clearly having a whale of a time (And check out that cowbell!). Meanwhile, design-wise the monkeys all look excellent. The biggest surprise to me was Scarlett Johansson as the seductive snake Kaa. Despite what seemingly every other critic will tell you, Johansson continues to impress me far more as a voice-over artist than as an actress. I normally find her phony as an actress, but playing a sly seductress using her voice only, she’s actually quite creepy in her best work since providing her voice for the excellent “Her”. I was far less impressed with Idris Elba and Bill Murray as Shere Khan and Baloo, respectively. Elba’s ‘whisper, whisper, SHOUT!’ act gets tiresome very quickly, and the character to me felt far too similar to Scar in “The Lion King”, rather than the character he was meant to be portraying. Most of the film’s dead spots for me, could be attributed to his fairly pedestrian interpretation of the character. Visually, the character is both intimidating and beautiful like all tigers, but I think George Sanders was much better in the 1967 film (I hear there’s another version of the tale soon to be made with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role. That sounds like a perfect match). As for Murray, I love the guy, but he’s simply not playing Baloo here. Yes, I’m a lover of Phil Harris’ inimitable Baloo from the 1967 version (and love his similar work as Little John in the underrated “Robin Hood”), but that’s not the problem. Murray’s playing Baloo as Garfield crossed with a stoner, and the interpretation just doesn’t work. Yes, he’s meant to be a Sloth bear, but that doesn’t mean he should be a stoner with a case of the munchies. John Goodman, who voiced the role in the animated “The Jungle Book 2” should’ve voiced Baloo here. It’s a perfect fit for him, whereas I get the feeling Favreau and screenwriter Marks were likely forced to fit the character around whatever Murray wanted to do. I love Bill Murray, but he’s turned Baloo into a cross between Yogi Bear and Garfield, whilst he and Sethi completely butcher the classic song ‘Bear Necessities’. He does get a great line though when he says ‘Not full hibernation, but I nap a lot!’, which is priceless. Yeah, it sounds like something Garfield would say, but at least it was funny. The animal animation is a little more variable in quality than the scenery, but a lot of it is terrific, if not as photorealistic. We get the cutest wolf cub you’ll ever see, and a terrific stampede scene shows exactly why this had to be CGI for the most part. You couldn’t mix a real kid in with real animals here, surely.

I really liked this, just as I really liked the 1967 version, though neither is among the best Disney has had on offer over the years. Yeah, both versions have a few dead spots, and this one gets some of the casting wrong. However, this looks absolutely astonishing, and when a herd of elephants walked by I have to say I felt some of that old Disney magic. I haven’t felt it for the longest time, so Favreau (in clearly his best directorial effort by a giant margin to date) should really be proud of this film. He’s made a serious fist of it, and there’s a little bit of awe in this. Well-done, this one really pleasantly surprised me.

NB: This film offers up a good piece of advice. Let’s just say that the cuter the animal, the more likely his three friends are currently stealing your food while you’re distracted.

Rating: B