Yet, somehow, it works.
The film begins in London in 1890-ish. Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgard) has worldwide fame and goes by John Clayton now. He's been married to Jane (Margot Robbie) for eight years. They get an invite to return to the Congo to inspect the infrastructure set up by the Belgians. He, Jane, and an American envoy, George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson)arrive there to discover that something nefarious is going on. A man named Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz) kidnaps Jane and uses her to bait Tarzan. Tarzan and Williams must travel through the jungle to stop Rom and save Jane.
There's a number of things that you simply have to buy into to accept this movie. Most important: Tarzan is a superhero. Despite everything in the setting that implies that this is a real world, including the real-life people, it's not. Tarzan is super human. He can battle a gorilla and be old pals with lions. Think of it like The Jungle Book, except that he can't actually converse with the animals. You have to believe that Tarzan could be raised by apes. There's no way to take large portions of the movie seriously without that. Tarzan speaks English pretty well given his upbringing. And, if you know anything about Belgium and the Congo in that era, I wouldn't think too hard about the exposition.
One of the most interesting things about the movie is that Yates assumes that the story of Tarzan is public domain enough that he can cover his origin in a series of short flashbacks. The vast majority of the movie is long after the more famous adventures of Tarzan. He rushes through the apes finding Tarzan and "Tarzan meet Jane" in a handful of scenes that mostly exist to inform the present. It is not the direction I assumed the story would go in when I first heard about a Tarzan movie, but it's a decision I appreciate.
The tone of the movie is an odd one. It's an odd mix of literary, pulp, and realistic. Setting it in the late 1800s Congo is something I haven't seen before at this level and it's something that Yates has a lot of fun with. I almost think the opportunity to build that world is what drew him to make the movie. While the setting aims for realism, the action doesn't at all. Get Tarzan swinging from vines and fighting creatures twice his size and it's fast-paced, energized, and not remotely to be taken seriously.
The cast works better than I expected. You don't get a much blanker canvass than Alexander Skarsgard. He's in incredible shape and that's his character. He's the only drag though, and even then, his physicality does work very well for the character. This is a man raised outside of society after all. He's not going to be charming and sociable. He's a beast and not about verbal nuance. Margot Robbie injects a great deal into Jane. She's in relative control the whole time, even when she's a prisoner. She isn't a superhero, but she's crafty and confident. This is the perfect kind of role for Waltz. He twirls his mustache for 2 hours and that's about it. Samuel L. Jackson is transparent comic relief, but dammit, he's good at doing that. All the characters don't really fit together in the same movie. That kept me off balance watching it in a way that made me like it more.
Yates and Co. do everything they can to stop this from being a white savior movie. They really do. The native Congo warriors are treated as hyper-capable. Djimon Hounsou is a chief of a rival tribe who is at odds with Tarzan for legitimate reasons. Jackson's character feels inserted in but he's a wise addition. It doesn't shy away from addressing the slave trade either. Still, blame the source material, but this is a movie about a white dude who is king of the African jungle. There's no getting around that.
I'm having hard time understanding why I enjoyed this movie so much. Maybe it's the earnestness of it all or simply that I'll give a pass to anything with Margot Robbie in it. All I know is that I was willing to turn off my brain, soak up the atmosphere, and enjoy the ride. It's a traditional summer action movie in a less common package. In a summer of underwhelming sequels, it's a different kind of sequel that broke the monotony.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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