Jungle love film reviews movie#

Wisely, director Jon Favreau sticks pretty much to the story that everyone knows, with a few extra plot-setting scenes that are exciting and fun. Though essentially a “live action” movie, just about every single frame would be impossible to film in real life and yet the images look ‘real.’ It requires surprisingly little suspension of disbelief to feel that Mowgli (the remarkable Neel Sethi, only 10 when he was cast) can really climb enormous trees and cliffs, or that a Lion King’s worth of wild animals can hit their cues so perfectly.

Jungle love film reviews movie#

And so it does in this new version of The Jungle Book.ĭisney magic and movie magic both depend on prestidigitation: fooling viewers into thinking that what they’re seeing is real, when intellectually they know it is not. And yet when Disney is at its best, real magic happens. After all, Disney is still at the controls and there are many good reasons to be mistrustful of Disney as a corporation. Those familiar with - and, like me, in love with - the 1967 animated Disney film, may fear (as I did) that the new version would substitute CGI for story, hip patois for human pathos, and generally just make a modern mess of it. Hunted by the traumatized tiger, Shere Khan, Mowgli is the rare human who means no harm, yet still is threatened because of his bipedalism. The “man cub” Mowgli, who was raised by wolves after being orphaned and lives in harmony with his fellow jungle creatures, nevertheless suffers for the sins of his species, whose command of “the red flower” (fire) destroys their habitats. I wouldn’t say that’s the lesson of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book or its movie versions, the latest of which was released on April 15, but it’s a key part of the story. And yet, put a man in a jungle and it’s a good chance he’ll get eaten pretty quickly. Man, in all his power and glory, intelligence and creativity, is the single greatest threat to the natural world. Mowgli and Baloo in Disney’s new and improved “The Jungle Book.”