Official Australian release date: 7/4/16. Viewed: 8/4/16.
Director: Jon Favreau
Actors: Neel Sethi, Ben
Kingsley, Bill Murray, Idris Elba
Genre: Adventure
Rating: PG
‘The Jungle Book’ is the sixth (?)
adaption of Kipling’s 120 year old story, probably best known to everyone from
Disney’s 1960s version. This time it’s live-action – well, it’s not a cartoon,
but has such great CGI animals you spend most of the time trying to figure out
if they might be real! Pretty sure everyone knows the plot – a boy, Mowgli
(Sethi) is abandoned in the jungle and raised by wolves/a panther, until a
tiger comes to kill him. It’s a little longer and darker than the cartoon
version, but it does do away with the nasty vultures.
It’s still a family/kids film at
heart, but there’s definitely a few scares and proper tiger v
bear/panther/wolves fights! Not sure I’d recommend anyone take a child under 8.
The film does a great job of bringing the wolves – Raksha (Nyong’o) and Akela
(Esposito) as Mowgli’s ‘mum’ & ‘dad’ – into the story more, as they’re his
true family. Kingsley as Bagheera the panther is stately and perfectly cast – a
great mentor for Mowgli. Like the cartoon, the main gripe I have is: where is
this jungle? Africa? We see rhinos, armadillos and buffalo. India? Tigers and
monkeys. South America? Panthers and pythons.
And then the bear – Baloo (Murray).
Either way, Murray has some great lines, but seems a little underutilised… the
one big letdown for me was the songs – the ‘Bare Necessities’ is sung nowhere
near as well by Murray, and while Christopher Walken is suited to King Louie,
he does a horrible version of ‘I Wanna Be Like You’. Regardless, the score is
great, the scenery/CGI fantastic, Shere Khan (Elba) us very menacing and
Favreau (coming off ‘Iron Man 2’ and ‘Chef’) keeps the pace up, while allowing
some sentimental moments.
Overall: Enjoyable and good-looking
family film
Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.
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