Note that at no point did I refer to The Jungle Book, 2016 edition as "live-action", because it's really not that at all: other than human orphan Mowgli (Neel Sethi), and I presume some of the props he interacts with, everything onscreen down to the last blade of grass and drop of water is a CGI effect (it's worth noting that Disney pioneered the "live action person in an animated world" genre with its 1920 Alice Comedies series, so this is plundering the corporate history books in more ways than one). It's not clear exactly what this buys the movie, and exceedingly clear what it costs, but the CGI is unbelievably splendid, anyway. Calling it "photorealistic" hardly captures the totality of it: this is the most authentic, realistic creation of a physical space that I have ever seen in a movie. Enough so that one starts to wonder if it wouldn't have just been more straightforward to actually go out and shoot it all in actual physical spaces, but I suppose the level of control of camera permitted to the filmmakers, and the precision of the interactions between the CGI cast of talking animals and the CGI jungle that they were able to achieve, were the argument in favor of doing it. It's enthralling to be dropped into the middle of the virtual sets and look around at them, at any rate, and the film earns the ever-loving hell out of the upcharge to 3-D; not since Avatar has a film Avatar'd this well. Which I mean as a compliment, and indeed a big one.
The cost, meanwhile, is entirely to the protagonist: Mowgli comes across as a rather uninteresting blank slate and Sethi's performance is dire. I don't see any reason to blame the tween actor for that: the ability to convincingly interact with sets and other characters when those things don't exist comes naturally to nobody, and I can't imagine he was helped out very much by Jon Favreau, a filmmaker whose approach to directing actors has long seemed to come down to hiring people he things it would be fun to hang out with, and then let them do whatever. Coaxing a performance out of a child under such inauspicious circumstances isn't really part of his skillset, and Sethi ends up with a real bad case of "Jake Lloyd in The Phantom Menace" syndrome, looking rather emptily are far too much of the film, while delivering most of his lines (and there are some acutely terrible lines in Justin Marks's screenplay) in a monotonously upbeat trill. The result is a Jungle Book with a giant hole in the place its heart and soul should be, and that puts a very low ceiling on how much it can be beyond a top-notch demo reel.
Anyway, the story is basically taken wholesale from Disney's 1967 animated feature (the studio's 1994 live-action version has been dropped so far down the memory hole that I'm sure they'd be happier for nobody to ever mention it again), drawing from Rudyard Kipling's short story collection in exactly the same ways, meaning just "Mowgli's Brothers" and "Kaa's Hunting" put in any appearance, and they themselves have been vastly transformed. The biggest shift, at the level of plot, is to throw a "because audiences in the 2010s like everything to be hyper-literal" backstory connecting Mowgli and the monstrous tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba), years ago, so that the tiger has some trumped-up reason for wanting the boy dead that even he doesn't seem to believe in particularly much. Otherwise, it's all the same stuff as 49 years ago: Mowgli has been raised to the age of about 12 in a wolf pack by Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) and Raksha (Lupita Nyong'o), and when Shere Khan discovers that a "man cub" is lose in the jungle, he vows to destroy it. So the sensible, boring black panther Bagheera (Sir Ben Kingsley) agrees to take Mowgli to the closest human settlement, though various adventures intervene, including a close run-in with the hypnotist rock python Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), who wants to eat Mowgli, the gigantopithecus Louie (Christopher Walken), who wants to exploit him, and the sloth bear Baloo (Bill Murray), who wants to hang out lazily with him.
I am god-damned if I can tell you why Louie has been upgraded to a long-extinct giant ape species. Probably to make the layover in the ruined temple he makes his kingdom even scarier than the shadows draped every which where. Perhaps coincidentally, probably not, but the episode with Louie is the worst thing in the movie by a laughably huge margin: crazily grim with weird, totally unsuccessful humor that tries to recast the giant ape king as a low-rent New Jersey mobster with a protection racket, and ultimately transformed into a horror-movie monster chase that's endlessly hamstrung by the film's family-friendly intentions.
Even setting that aside, the whole matter of The Jungle Book is a little bit odd, tonally. It is understood that the 1967 film underwent a significant rewrite to make it less dark; I wonder if this is what it looked like before that rewrite? It's a startlingly un-funny film, with almost no real attempt before Baloo shows up to include even any comic relief; compared to the original, it has all of the jazzy, anachronistic humor siphoned out, and action-adventure setpieces plugged back in. It's a change for the better, I frankly think; my ambivalence towards the '67 film on this count is on the record, and while I think this film goes much too far in the other direction a few times (the Louie sequence; a water buffalo stampede that's a straightforward, if technically impressive, lift from The Lion King), this is generally more in keeping with the consequential tone of Kipling's writing. And most of the setpieces are pretty good: aye, just one blob of 1s and 0s being manipulated into another, but the lighting effects are dramatic and delightful, and the sound mix bombastic. For a PG-rated family movie, the action snaps.
For the most part, the film keeps its weaknesses in check: Mowgli is used more as a point of view character than a protagonist much of the time, so we're seeing what he sees rather than actually having to deal with the fact that he's banal and unsympathetic. Virtually all of the casting choices for the animals is 100% on point (Murray, surprisingly, is the clear weak link, though the way the character has been re-conceived as a pathetic, dumpy conman would make it hard on anybody). The best performance, Elba's, is also somehow the most disappointing: it fits the metanarrative better to have the imperious tyrant dominating the jungle voiced by a smugly bored white Englishman, and George Sanders was anyways going to be impossible to improved upon. But Elba is terrifically menacing regardless. So at any rate, most of the characters we're spending time with are enjoyable company.
Eventually, the film shits the bed, hard: the ending is an extraordinary protracted exercise in missing the point and letting the hero off the hook, although the loveliness of the setting of the final battle helps the medicine go down. It does contribute to the overall sense that, for all its energy and whiz-bang, this Jungle Book is an emotional sham, interested rather in marshaling code around than providing a remotely compelling story. But you know, that code is marshaled around tremendously well, and even when it's most obviously trying badly to put something over on us, The Jungle Book is never less than pleasurable to watch.
7/10
Oh, I was looking forward to your thoughts on this one, a film I had so many problems with that it baffles me that it's gotten such a glowing critical reception (I'll concede that it's beautiful to look at).
ReplyDeleteMy biggest issue with the film from a story perspective is that it positions Mowgli as a Jungle Messiah. The pther animals are constantly referring to his "tricks" almost as if he were able to walk on water, and that scene where he rescues the elephant cub while being watched by all the elephants, worshipped by the creatures who are worshipped in the jungle, that gave out a big Messiah vibe. I don't usually mind a Messiah story, but in this case it bothered me because Mowgli is a man, and man's relationship to nature has always been a problematic, so to position a man as a savior to the jungle animals, as the one to be worshipped, made me very uncomfortable (not sure if I'm explaining myself).
I also found the King Louie scene the most distracting scene in the film, ranging from something creepy to something trying to be comic (and having him actually sing I Wanna Be Like You helped matters not one bit).
Yeah, this is not a "more than 90% on Rotten Tomatoes" sort of movie at all. And the songs have a definite tendency to break it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a remarkably good point about Mowgli's position in the film, and I think part of what makes the ending so rotten is that it feels like he really shouldn't be the hero - everything Shere Kahn says about him turns out to be true, after all.
One reason for Louie's change of species, so I've heard, is that gigantopithicus was native to India, while orangutans aren't.
ReplyDeleteWhich ending is better, the 1967 or the 2016 ending? You hate them both
ReplyDeleteI found this film lovely. Also, is it just me, or is Hollywood going through some India phase? Avatar, Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi, Eat Pray Love and a slew of other minor films. This is in contrast with India's bad press in the West in recent years. I mean, it's so bad even the New York Times has resorted to quoting Indian socialist intellectuals like Arundhati Roy, the same New York Times that is so anti-socialist it puts the Arab Gulf monarchs above the likes of Chávez and Castro.
ReplyDeleteWhat did you think of the Kaa sequence? It's brief, but personally I think it's the most effective scene in the film, and Scarlett Johansson gives another exceptional vocal performance. The visuals during the flashback, although I agree annoying in their over-literalization of the conflict, are stunning, aggressively expressionistic in a way that Hollywood films rarely allow themselves to be. In a sense it reminded me of the lovely storybook sequence in Deathly Hallows, Part 1, another visually stunning flashback delivered by a cameo performance from an otherwise irrelevant character. I kind of hope it's a trend.
ReplyDeleteI also completely agree on the King Louie sequence. Its tone is so all over the place, and the use of "I Wanna Be Like You" completely insane in context. It never should've tried to be funny; as a menacing figure, King Louie's design is wonderful (if somewhat incomprehensible, like you said), and the atmosphere of the jungle temple is delightfully moody. But then Christopher Walken starts talking, and then singing, and it's just a disaster.
It was sure pretty, and yet, that very prettiness just made the characters talking in jokey twenty-first-century vernacular feel more jarring to me. The script may be less silly than the 1967 one, but I didn't think it was sufficiently less-jokey to be commensurate with the visuals. When it went more or less serious with the dialogue, as for Shere Khan, it was okay, but otherwise, HMPH. Still, within that context, I didn't find the King Louie stuff notably worse than the rest--MOST of it was kinda non-great. I did, however, find myself thinking, NO! This is a priceless archaeological site! Don't just destroy it like that! Which may be beside the point.
ReplyDeleteGreat review, I think you touched on most of the issues I had with the film, which, overall I enjoyed a lot.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't a fan of the films version of Baloo; I didn't like how they started out with him manipulating mowgli. I felt it didn't give them enough time together to form a close bond before bagheera tells him to cut the ties.
I also wasn't a fan of Idris Elbas voice for shere Khan, like you I prefer Khan when he's a bit more RP as opposed to Elba's estuary accent. However he was wonderfully evil. Killing arkeela was so savage! And that bit when he spoke to the puppies gave me chills, with the cuckoo story! That was some deliciously dark, to have an evil interloper charming and twisting your own children. Shivers!
Considering he was acting against absolutely nothing, no animals no scenery, I thought Mowgli was alright. A little lifeless but there was no life at all around so I felt he did very well considering. Kudos to him.
I was surprised at how straight a remake it was, with its deviations from the plot being weirdly content to just steal from bambi and the lion king. I also think it was a waste not to have trust in me sung in the film. Scar Jo did a great job of it and it would've fitted much more organically than I wanna be like you. Christopher walken did a good job there, but the film isn't a musical. So it was a little weird to just have them singing. The bare necessities made sense because they were basically coming up with the tune there and then so they were just mucking about. Trust in me would've worked as a hypnotic spell. I wanna be like you was just kind of there. If they wanted the songs I feel like they should've committed to it being a musical. Either do that and write some new songs for it or don't have any I'd say. Plus having the melodies as background music worked really well in some of it. The bare necessities worked really well as light music for happier scenes and the dark version of I wanna be like you was good for the Louie-Mowgli chase. And trust in me played as mowgli stole the fire and returned to the jungle and it worked so well, all sinuous and sneaky and scary at the same time.
Disney basically own the box office now. This year: the leftovers of Star Wars, zootopia, jungle book, civil war. All well reviewed and received hits that are raking in money. They've still got doctor strange, finding dory, Moana and Rogue One to come out and thats just the ones I can remember right now. And you know they're all gonna make money. That's so much money!
I basically liked this movie, but agree with almost every point raised. What let it down most for me was the changed ending from the 1967 film. Mowgli doesn't want to leave the jungle because he doesn't know any different. Bagheera knows he isn't safe there. Baloo knows that too, deep down. The episodes with Kaa and the apes and his final fight with Shere Khan show that while he is capable of adapting and surviving in the jungle, he will always be different. Mowgli only realises that when he sees the girl outside the man-village, at the water hole. And then biology kicks in.
ReplyDeleteIn this film - presumably because (a) sequels and (b) little boys don't want to even think about boys and girls - it abandons that nature-nurture conflict resolution in the ending. In fact, in ended a tad abruptly, I felt. Without it, the whole thing is just "some stuff happens to Mowgli in the jungle" and then "If you want to be a wolf or a bear, just be one."
Actually, this is a textbook example of an "over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes" movie. A high tomato meter rating doesn't imply high quality, but broad acceptability. It means most critics had at least a "sure, why not" reaction.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that a lot of movie trailers are now bragging about getting 100% on RT, and I think that says a lot about both the state of the industry and what most moviegoers seem to want.