"The Jungle Book" 2016 is a delight. Go see it.
Neel Sethi is utterly adorable. He's so good you want to dispatch a protective
bubble or a team of social workers to his home to rescue him from the sad fate
of other excellent child stars, like Judy Garland and Patty Duke.
Sethi plays Mowgli, a little Indian boy who cavorts
around the forest with his animal friends: a pack of wolves, Baloo the bear
(Bill Murray), and Bagheera, a black panther (Ben Kingsley). Shere Khan the
Tiger (Idris Elba), Kaa the Python (Scarlett Johansson), and King Louie the
Orangutan (Christopher Walken) provide menace. The ratio of mindless fun to
genuinely scary and suspenseful scenes is perfect. The CGI is excellent. I'm a
birdwatcher and it was fun seeing realistic looking hoopoes, bee-eaters,
peacocks and hornbills.
I loved "The Jungle Book" 1967 and I love this
movie, too. I wish this film had as many songs as the old version. One song is
cut because of a change in the plot, and one song is cut because a change in
the approach. In the older version the elephants were comical; in this version
they are the gods who created the forest. Baghera teaches Mowgli to worship
them. That idea of elephants-as-gods probably won't go over well with many
religious viewers.
Kaa, the python, does sing "Trust in Me," but
over the closing credits, not during the film. That's a shame. Scarlet
Johansson's smoky-jazzy Chet-Baker style version knocks it out of the park. The
track is on youtube and fans are insisting that Johansson sing the next James
Bond movie theme song.
"The Jungle Book" 2016 is all about boys and
men and all for boys and men. The only significant female character is Kaa, and
she tries to kill and eat Mowgli.
Most of the voice actors are much more low key than they
were in the original version. I wish they had had more fun, been more
flamboyant and campy. Bill Murray and Christopher Walken are really the only
ones who juice up their voices for their parts, recognizing that voice acting
is different than being on camera. Idris Elba is much too low-key as Shere
Khan. George Sanders was, of course, superb in the original. With that voice
and that attitude, who could he not be?
Go see this movie for no other reason than to hear
Christopher Walken voice King Louie the Orangutan who wants to be human. Walken
is Just. So. Good. I mean, he's Christopher Walken. How could he not be?
"The Jungle Book" 2016 has a significantly
different ending than "The Jungle Book" 1967. If you don't want to
know how the film ends, stop reading now, as this review will reveal the
ending.
The plot of "The Jungle Book," both 1967 and
2016, is that a young orphan boy has been raised by wolves. His mentors,
Bagheera and Baloo, must escort him to the man village, where he belongs. In
the 1967 version, Mowgli does go to live in the man village. He is lured by a
cute girl, singing the significantly titled song "My Own Home." In
the 2016 version, Mowgli stays in the jungle. What is the movie saying, then, about
humanity's "own home"?
Mowgli, in fighting off Shere Khan, grabs a burning torch
from the man village. He accidentally sets the forest on fire. He uses his
engineering skill and the elephants' "divine" strength to create a
dam and flood the burning forest, thus extinguishing the fire and saving his
animal friends' lives. In the 2016 version, the ideal human is not one who
leaves the forest to live in the man village. The ideal human is an
environmentalist. He is in the forest, of the forest, and he manages the forest
and protects it from mankind's depredations.
***
Read about the 1970 film "My Sweet Charlie"
starring Patty Duke and Al Freeman Jr in a previous blog post here: http://save-send-delete.blogspot.com/2016/04/my-sweet-charlie-1970-patty-duke-al.html
Danusha, thank you for your JUNGLE BOOK 2016 post
ReplyDeleteThe film says humanity's home is a mix of whatever goes into and whatever the human brings into it ... individually and collectively.
Engineering can be of the divine.
"He is in the forest, of the forest land he manages the forest and protects it from mankind's depredations". Yes, we "predate" on the forest and other biomes.