ehalcomb: The Jungle Book (2016) || Review

I tend to stay away from remakes or re-imaginings of movies that are considered by many to be classics. For me, it started with Snow White and the Huntsman. I never saw the original Disney classic Snow White but I can say with utmost certainty that Snow White and the Huntsman is the most average movie I have ever seen. Though that film is a post for another day, I can't help but think that movies like these are nothing more than cash grabs. John Favreau's The Jungle Book may have started as one of these pointless remakes at first, but the final cut turned out to be a great film with fantastic character development, surprisingly great visuals, and a very compelling story about a boy growing into his own man.

I love almost every single character in this film. Bill Murray's Baloo is two parts hilarious and one part heroic and Ben Kingsly's Bagheera is one of my favorite performances of this year. Mowgli is really what makes this movie shine, however. It's hard to explain but the kid who plays the role just seems so genuine. From what I know The Jungle Book is one of his first major acting roles and it barely shows here. Even though every scene is actually just him talking to a blue wall, I didn't catch hardly any lines where he was emotionless or stagnant. Mowgli is the hero, but there can't be a hero without a villain and Shere Khan was one of the best things about the film. Idris Elba's performance mixed with the way his scenes were directed make for a fantastic villain. As soon as he enters a scene nothing else matters. His plans are simple and direct: as soon as the peace between the animals is over, Mowgli is dead. I can't talk about Jungle Book characters without mentioning Christopher Walken's amazing King Louis. This IS the best character in the entire film. His entrance starts out mysterious and slowly builds throughout the sequence until the climax where he gets up from his throne and attacks. Everything about the scene is absolutely stunning. The only character related problem I have is with the hypnotic snake, Kaa. Though her introduction is great and the atmosphere of her domain is unsettling, her only purpose for the story is to explain the secret history between Shere Khan and Mowgli that Shere Khan ends up explaining later on anyway. It isn't exactly detrimental to the plot, but rather a minor annoyance. It really just seemed that Disney shoe-horned her character in for nostalgia.

This film looks surprisingly beautiful. The way it uses colors and atmosphere to show emotion is very clever in some scenes and the CG used for everything in the movie is done incredibly well. My only real problem with the animation is the animal's eyes. It might just have been me, but I felt that the eyes of the animals were almost too expressive. In a movie where keeping the animals looking as lifelike as possible is key, it caught me off guard and sometimes reminded me that they were in-fact computer generated. The music of The Jungle Book is really good. Though the original pieces made for the movie are slightly generic, the use of callback melodies was masterful. Speaking of which, this movie does have a few musical scenes. It isn't enough to really call it a musical but it did happen and it did catch me off guard. However, these scenes aren't too long and the way the film transitions from original pieces to 'Bear Necessities' or 'I Wanna Be like You' feels very natural and felt very satisfying.

Honestly, The Jungle Book was a huge surprise to me. I tend to trust sites like Rotten Tomatoes but when I see them give a Disney remake a 93% I get nervous walking into the theatre. This film is great. It has minor problems and doesn't do anything mind-blowing but for what it does, it does right.

The Jungle Book (2016) is a necessity.