Hartl continued, “Now Sommers and Disney have taken on Rudyard Kipling, and although the results are more watchable, the movie is still a once-over-lightly affair. It also seems to have less to do with Kipling than with famous moments cribbed from other movies, among them "Wuthering Heights," Disney's "Aladdin" and even "Land of the Pharaohs."”
In the 1994 live-action “Jungle Book,” Mowgli (Sean Naegeli) is a somewhat Heathcliff type, separated from his beloved friend, Kitty (Joanna Wolf) at the age of five, and raised in the jungle. When he is reunited with her as an adult (Jason Scott Lee), she’s (Lena Headey) too civilized for him and becomes engaged to a back-stabbing British soldier (Cary Elwes). Her insensitive father (Sam Neill) approves of the engagement, while a doctor friend (John Cleese) proves a better judge of character.
Hartl commented, “There are no shadings to any of these people, although both Cleese and Elwes do find ways of tweaking the material.” Elwes was Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood, and he gives a naughty spin to his sillier dialogue (“I have friends in low places”). Cleese can’t be in a movie like this without giving a Monty Python-like quality to everything he says. Unfortunately, neither actor has enough to do.
What this film has going for it is Jason Scott Lee as the adult Mowgli. Hartl criticized, “Whereas Elijah Wood was all wrong for "Huck Finn," Lee gives an inspired, instinctively physical performance, sniffing and foraging through the jungle, communing with the animals and making himself seem completely at home.”
In a sudden powerful scene, he is placed in a trophy room filled with the mounted heads of jungle animals, and he reacts like the corpses of his own family had been put on display.
Hartl credited, “Graceful, witty, self-possessed and confident in his knowledge of his environment, Lee never makes a false move. Even when Sommers forces him to ham it up, rolling his eyes and defying gravity like a Hong Kong martial-arts star, he gets away with it. He's almost better than he was as Bruce Lee in "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story," and that's no small achievement.”
Even the child Mowgli is nicely cast. Sean Naegeli is all-natural charm and cunning even before he officially becomes a natural child. Too bad the movie doesn’t spend more time with him, showing how he was raised by wolves and monkeys who helped sharpen his senses. The first part of the movie seems in a huge rush to get to the adult part of the story. We don’t even know who Mowgli is before he’s an adult.
That’s the biggest problem with this “Jungle Book.” Hartl mentioned, “Sommers is so busy spinning his camera, crowding the soundtrack with animal noises and piling on the cheesy visual effects that he can't stop for a reflective moment or a character-revealing touch.”
Maybe that’s the kind of “Jungle Book” this generation wants. However, maybe it’s just the one Sommers thinks it needs.
I had a hard time trying to find this on any streaming service for free. Surprisingly, it’s not available on Disney+, which I don’t understand why. Maybe because it’s not entirely a Disney movie, but I don’t know. I know it is available to stream on Amazon Prime, but you must pay in order to watch it. If you want to watch it, I don’t think it will hurt, but I personally was not a fan. I didn’t really like the dialogue or the characters, as things they did came out as campy and weird. Still, this is a harmless film for kids. If you see it, it won’t hurt, but I won’t see it again after seeing it one time. Check it out if you would like, but if you don’t like it, fine, but if you do, I understand.
Tomorrow in “Disney Month 2022,” I will look at a movie that I saw some of on TV as a kid and watched it again as an adult, but not really enjoying.
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