Tarzan & Jane/Tarzan II

As all of you might remember from my review of “Tarzan” last year, I had stated that it was one of my favorite Disney movies. There could be a high chance that it was the last great movie of the Disney renaissance. The film had great music, great characterization, but then comes a direct-to-DVD sequel, “Tarzan and Jane,” released in 2002. Boy is that a huge story of its own. Let’s take a look.

The movie starts off with Jane (Olivia d'Abo) who is trying to think of what she can do as a special party for Tarzan (Michael T. Weiss) for their first anniversary. Right then she starts to think of ideas of what she can do. The first idea she thinks of is throwing a party. However, Terk, voiced by April Winchell, suggests that a party is not a good idea. This starts showing an entire episode of the cartoon series. The first episode shows how sometime after the events of the first movie, Jane’s friends, voiced by Grey DeLisle, Nicollette Sheridan and Tara Strong (Bubbles from "Powerpuff Girls," Raven from "Teen Titans" and Rikku from "Final Fantasy X" and "Final Fantasy X-2"), visit her in the jungle. They would like to research the reason why she chose to stay over returning on the boat to England and that she is losing her British upbringing. Jane wants to show her friends that she’s as classy as ever so she decides to have a picnic with them in the jungle. Tarzan is late to the picnic since he’s occupied deciding whether he should wear pants or not. By the time he arrives, some shenanigans have occurred like nearly getting eaten by everything in the jungle and now he has to go find them. He does end up finding them and saving them and the friends find out that Tarzan is good for Jane and they leave happy.

Coming back to the present, we see from Jane in that entire 20 minute part is, “Oh, I guess a party isn’t that good of an idea.” Does that irritate you? Well don’t worry. There are two more segments to look at! The second story begins when Jane thinks of getting him a large diamond. However, Tantor, voiced by Jim Cummings, reminds her of an event last time Tarzan wanted to get “her” a diamond, and thus we get another episode from the cartoon series. This one talks about two jewel hunters, voiced by Jim Cummings and John O’Hurley, arriving in Africa because they know that there are diamond veins underneath the volcano. However, the jungle is false and they need a guide. They ask Tarzan if he’ll help them. He says yes only if they’ll let him have a single diamond for a ring for Jane. They agree and he leads them to the volcano. Eventually they find the diamonds. Now here comes the huge mistake in this episode. After they collect the diamonds, they turn on Tarzan and try to kill him. There’s more than one thing wrong with this awful plan.

1.      How are you going to get back “through” the jungle you just came and “know” it's filled with wild animals without Tarzan?

2.      All Tarzan is asking for is a “single” diamond. The hunters could have all the rest.

3.      These hunters are retarded.

Once they betray him, the volcano erupts and everyone escapes on a piece of the volcano like a surfboard (doesn’t sound like fun does it).

This segment ends when Jane figures out that maybe a diamond wouldn’t be that good of an idea (since a 20 minute recap of why a diamond would be a bad idea). Finally, she thinks that they should just have a dance. However, Terk and Tantor both say that there is a problem with that. This leads to the last segment, which fortunately is the last.

This cartoon starts off with a pilot from a WWI style fighter plane being shot down by another plane. The second plane lands and the pilot, voiced by Jeff Bennett, go looking for Jane. He eventually finds her and it turns out that he’s an old friend of hers from when she was back in England. Tarzan gets possessed by the green-eyed monster when he hears that he was dancing with her but brushes it off because he “just doesn’t trust him.” What happens is that he came back to get a music box from Jane. She finds it and the music box falls over, which contains a decoder of sorts. A reviewer by the name of Brandon stated, “Now, here’s what bothers me about this episode. She sees the coded message but knows nothing else about it. He could have EASILY said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I am and I’m spying for England” But for some STRANGE reason, he decides to tell her that he’s a traitor and that she’s going to be a hostage. Despite the fact that doing so is COMPLETELY unnecessary.” Tarzan does find the first pilot, voiced by Alexis Denisof, who was shot down, he warns him of the second pilot’s betrayal and Tarzan saves Jane. However, even though kidnapping Jane, the villain does go back to save Jane showing he’s not completely bad.

Coming back to the present where hearing everything from this episode retold in front of her, she knows that dancing is “also” a bad idea because she danced with a guy once before. Now she is sad over everything she returns home only to see that everything they told her not to do, they did instead. They throw the party, Tarzan got her a diamond ring, and they dance as the movie ends.

Now look, this in of itself barely is called a movie. Why? Because it’s three episodes put together by ten minutes of new footage. That is not a movie. That is a retelling of already completed television episodes to make fast money. The original animation they used is really bad, the entire film seems unneeded as the point they were trying to make could easily have been made in the length of one episode rather than a whole movie, and the episodes they used weren’t really related to the transcending plot.

Brandon mentioned that, “I’ve already expressed my frustration with the issues in the episodes themselves. Mainly from the stupidity of the supposed villains, but I feel that I must reinforce just how stupid it is. If anything good were to come from this movie it would be that the individual stories are short and you don’t have to pay attention for very long if you don’t want to.  And trust me. You won’t want to.”

Brandon said, “Everything about this film reeks of expedience and the quality definitely suffers for it.” The original had a great theme, beautiful animation, and captivating music. This film does hold a candle to that. It’s fast money, pure and simple. Even though this can be said to most sequels, at least they have their own story and don’t just cram a few episodes together and call it a film. Just avoid this at all cost, don’t even watch it.

I remember seeing this at a store one day when I was a kid and I was out shopping with my mom, aunt and cousin. I didn’t say anything about buying it, nor did I even think about seeing it. Then I saw it on YouTube about a year or two ago and boy was I in for a disappointment.

Anyway, enough of that, let’s move on to the next sequel.

For years Disney has been making sequels to their animated films, not putting in everything valuable and putting what was left into low quality, low budget, and straight-to-video sequels. They finally started to realize that it didn’t have to be that way, but sadly, too little too late. As the legacy that was Walt Disney’s hand drawn feature film animation department goes out of business into entertainment forgetfulness, one of their final sequels comes closer than its forerunners to being a decent sequel.

There’s a short-lived moment in Disney’s animated “Tarzan” where the boy, raised from a baby by his adoptive ape parents, instantly grows into the vine-swinging, jungle-yelling man. Scott Gwin stated in his review, “There are about twenty years of lost storytelling in there somewhere. Some would be happy to leave those up to the imagination, but since Disney felt compelled to create a sequel they plundered those missing years for a story from Tarzan’s childhood.” Tarzan II, released in 2005, gives a glimpse at some of the challenges Tarzan had to overcome growing up in a world where he just didn’t fit in.

As hard as he did try, young Tarzan, voiced by Harrison Chad, just couldn’t do it. He’s not as fast, not as swift and definitely not as welcome as the other young apes in the colony. When the apes come to think Tarzan has died in a tragic accident because of his weaknesses, most of them seriously end that they are better off without him. Gwin mentioned, “Tarzan overhears those mutterings and decides to strike out Simba-style to escape the shame and discover a place where he can truly belong.” This is only the beginning when a run-in with the mythical monster Zugor takes him somewhere that no young ape, or young human, belongs.

“Tarzan II” takes the child Tarzan through a series of low chances of adventures that are completely filled with repeating messages for child audiences. Gwin stated that, “The story is an oddly-meshed combination of The Lion King and “Are You My Mother” with Tarzan and other characters figuring out who they are, why they need each other and how they fit into that quirky collective we call a family.” Even though this movie is targeted for kids and doesn’t have the large demand of its originator, it’s not totally without entertainment for adults. The lessons are true without being very pedestrian and the comedy is smart enough to get a few laughs from a more mature audience.

If nothing else, adults will be able to enjoy the voice-acting talents of one of the most impressive all-star casts to ever be on a Disney animated sequel. Glenn Close and Lance Henriksen come back in the roles of Tarzan’s ape parents Kala and Kerchak. The villains, an outsider mother ape Mama Gunda and her two violent, mindless mama’s boys Uto and Kago are perfectly cast, played by Estelle Harris (Estelle Costanza from “Seinfeld”), Ron Perlman and Brad Garrett. The biggest surprise, and biggest pleasure, is hearing the late “language” comedian George Carlin voice the grumpy ape who both hates and teaches the child Tarzan. It’s a perfect combination for a man who has balanced his career between “Thomas the Tank Engine” and talking about the seven words you can never say on television.

Voice talent isn’t the only thing helping “Tarzan II.” Musician Phil Collins returns with some of the classic songs we’ve learned to love from the first film and a few new songs for good measures. Also there is the great visual style that came to life the jungles and animals of deepest Africa in the original movie. The drawing makes it exciting to watch Tarzan’s first discovery of the vine swing and tree branch surfing. Even though this isn’t equal to the original film, the animation is still completely beautiful and far better than anything from the other Disney sequels.

Gwin ended his review by saying, “In no way should my partially-glowing praise be mistaken for approval. I still think it’s a pity that Disney repeatedly pillages its classic stories and characters for shameless sequels. That said, this is the worthiest successor I’ve seen yet. Had the story been one of a teenaged Tarzan struggling against more dangerous situations in his quest of self-identity, it might even have made for a really good feature film. As it is, I’ll take Tarzan II for the enjoyable kid’s movie it is and pray Disney doesn’t go for a Tarzan trilogy.

In the end, even though this movie is good, I think this was an unnecessary sequel. I didn’t see a reason why this movie should have been made, but we have this midquel, so if you want to check it out, do so. I don’t “highly” recommend it, but the choice is yours.

Tomorrow I will be looking at another good direct-to-video sequel, which is great for “Disney Sequel Month.”