Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is clearly a favourite among Disney execs, despite them not owning exclusive rights to it. It got the animated treatment in 1967 and has had 3 live action films, one in 1994, another a mere 4 years later, and of course the big budget one in 2016.
Jon Favreau is at the Director’s helm for this one, he was the director of the first 2 Iron Man films so had some clout with Disney, not to mention experience handling special effects. He would later be one of the creators of the one bit of Disney Star Wars material that isn’t horribly divisive in the Mandalorian.
The film needed a sizeable budget to accommodate all the CG necessary for this production, and got $175m, the film made $966m at the box office and was well acclaimed by critics at the time of release.
The 1967 animated feature came after production budgets for animated features were slashed across the board, and this is very obvious in the film, a lot of animation is recycled and some of the faster-paced stuff looks like it has frames missing. It’s unfortunate as this one is somewhat reliant on cartoon slapstick, something that requires a fast pace. That said, the two songs you remember are just as entertaining, they have remembered how sound-effects work with the impacts feeling like they have impact now, the voice cast is on-point and the painted backdrops are beautiful to behold.
OK, it’s amazing how two stories that follow a very similar main story can feel different with just the subtlest of changes. The main story of the two is identical, Mowgli is abandoned on his own and a Black Panther named Bagheera has him adopted by a pack of wolves. Unfortunately a human-hating Tiger named Sheer Khan wants him dead and the wolves, not wanting to fight him, agree to have Bagheera send him to a man-village for his protection.
The devil is in the details, whereas the original kept things fairly simple to account for a short run-time, this had the time to expand on the characterisations. Mowgli doesn’t quite fit in as a wolf but is able to use his wits to find clever shortcuts, essentially tools and machines, that are frowned upon by his pack. This sets up some important plot developments for later on. There’s more a sense of family with the pack, as there’s more of them actually interacting, which makes the decision to cast him back to the man-village to avoid them getting hurt more gut-wrenching. That said, they try and give him some agency in this decision by having him leave voluntarily, it doesn’t really fit that he’d try and put another tribe in danger later when he tries to persuade Bagheera not to take him to the man village.
Speaking of trying to give him agency but kinda failing, they separate Mowgli from Bagheera for a while, and he has to flee Sheer Khan by joining along with a stampede and later having to evade a mudslide. It’s after this he has an encounter with Kaa, whose role is somewhat reduced from the original to providing some exposition linking Mowgli and Sheer Khan, and it’s the next person to add to the dead parents count.
Anyway, him being rescued by Balloo feels a little out of character for a largely lazy and non-aggressive character. OK, he has a fight in the finale, but that’s in a confrontation he couldn’t escape, here he went out of his way to do so, and it’s contrived as well as weirdly out of character. Balloo allows Mowgli’s inventiveness to go to good use and a shortened version of Bear Necessities is sung.
The intriguing thing here is they don’t digitally edit the voices to sound more pitch perfect. They don’t sound perfect but that’s intentional, it’s 2 guys having fun. I wish more Disney movies did this.
King Louie is now a Gigantopithecus as opposed to an Orangutan, thanks to doing basic research, again the singing isn’t perfect, it’s not even that good but it kinda works.
Sheer Khan is another example of where the devil is in the details. He’s still a Tiger everyone fears that hates humans but in the animated version he’s sophisticated and cunning where he’s much angrier in the remake. Both have tremendous voices behind them. Sheer Khan’s hatred for humans when it’s revealed that Mowgli’s father burned him when he struck.
The main narrative divergence
comes from Sheer Khan rather than being a hunter tries to lure Mowgli back by
killing his wolf-father, and yes, I’m adding that to the dead parents count
too.
Word eventually reaches Mowgli and he races back with fire, burning down half the forest in the process and proving that maybe Sheer Khan has a point? Mowgli wins the battle using his wits and utilising his prowess for gadgetry and ends up staying with the pack at the end. I leave it to you to decide whether him staying with the pack was a better ending than him returning to the man village. I guess that all depends on how things progress from there.
The CG is reasonably impressive and I really have to give props to Neel Sethi for his performance as Mowgli. He was a very young and inexperienced actor having to act against green screen with only balls and puppetry to give him any indication of where things are. It requires complete faith in your director, so props to Jon Favreau as well.
The Jungle Book remake largely succeeds in adding depth and complexity to a relatively simple story whilst cutting off unnecessary bits. We didn’t see the vultures or the elephant troupe beyond cameos in this, and it’s for the better. The vocal performances are solid, and under the circumstances, I don’t think anyone could have done better than Neel Sethl did as Mowgli.
Admittedly, it means we’re stretching the definition of ‘live action’ with several scenes that are purely CG but I think it works here.
Rating 80/100
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