Delayed Reaction: The Jungle Book (1994)

The Pitch: Gee, we have all these trained animals lying around...when was the last time we made a Jungle Book movie?

How I Came Into It: After making the disastrous mistake the first time I tried to watch this, I was soured on the whole idea. It's odd that a Disney movie that's barely 20 years old is this hard to find. Given the material, I was worried that it would be tied to issues of "Now that we look back on it, half the characters are actually incredibly racist".

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) It's funny how much of this matches up with the Pirates of the Caribbean structure. Mowgli is Will. 1994 Lena Heady looks a lot like 2003 Keira Knightley. Cary Elwes' William Boone is totally Jack Davenport's Norrington with a little Barbosa thrown in. I enjoyed the overlap of those dynamics a lot. Thanks to seeing that awful 1997 movie, just about everything about this looked better. The trained animals were impressive. The acting was competent. The action was well staged. It came away looking very good.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It's not very true to the story it gets its name from. I don't know how much I can knock it for that, given that I went in only expecting the loosest of ties anyway.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend