Movie Reaction: The Jungle Book

Formula: The Jungle Book / The Jungle Book

It's starting to feel like Disney has found the cheat code for Hollywood. For years, they maximized profits by reissuing old animated hits back into theaters. They've had the Disney Vault, which allows them to re-release those same movies on VHS/DVD/Bluray to much fanfare, and by controlling the window of release, increase the demand. Now, they're just taking the same old stories, making them live-action, and reaping in profits while also managing to not damage the reputation of the original films. It's not even fair.

This year's iteration comes in the form of Jon Favreau's wonderful adaptation of The Jungle Book.
I'll admit, I wasn't looking forward to this one very much. The 1967 animated feature is not one of my favorites. In fact, I barely even remember it. The 1994 live action movie is nothing special (although that's more of a sequel). I heard that this version would still feature CGI talking animals and the only human character is a kid working on his first movie. That's a formula for disaster most of the time.  I trust that Jon Favreau wouldn't sign on to a doomed project (you know, except Zathura). Then, news of the voice cast started coming in. Ben Kingsley as Bagheera. Idris Elba as Shere Khan. Bill Murray as Baloo! So, I decided to give this a chance and I'm glad I did.

This is very much the Jungle Book story that you know. There's a few beats that are changed from the animated movie, mostly taking it in a darker direction. The music is all gone except for a couple cases when they couldn't help themselves. I don't remember the original movie playing this much like The Lion King, but this one certainly did. That's not a complaint. It's a good story spine to use. The real stars are the characters anyway. The Jungle Book is filled with great characters and Favreau has a great time exploring all of them.

This is delightful mix of voices. Idris Elba should be tapped to play bad guys more. He's so charming and frightening when he wants to be. Between The Force Awakens and now this, I have to believe that Lupita Nyong'o (as Raksha) has a long career of voice work ahead of her. That voice has such great warmth and wisdom. Christopher Walken's King Louie is a bit on the nose, as is Ben Kingsley's Bagheera. I'm ok with obvious casting if it's the right casting though. Scarlett Johannson makes for an interesting, although underused Kaa. I think most of the fun of Bill Murray's Baloo is just knowing that he's recording it with a grin on his face the whole time. And none of this works without a good Mowgli. Neel Sethi isn't a revelation, but he's pretty good. Even fully trained actors can have trouble working with characters who aren't there and he sells that much. It really feels like he's talking to a jungle full of animals.

Visually, this is a great looking movie. The jungle isn't realistic. It's not meant to be. It's what a jungle looks like when you see it in your head. Kind of like how the fairy godmother part of last year's Cinderella didn't even try to ground itself in reality, this is the jungle that needs to exist for this story. The talking animals are less distracting than I thought they'd be. The mouths moving don't look natural. They are understated though, so you can spend most of the time appreciating how good the rest of the animation looks.

It's really is hard to say why The Jungle Book works. It just does. It gets you laughing. It gets you excited. It gets you emotional. The world and the characters are fully realized which is the most important thing. Everything comes together just right. It's difficult for me to find a reason not to recommend this.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend