A Lush Jungle Brimming with Heart and Adventure
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book has now been adapted four times by Disney—first in 1967 with the classic animated film, then in 1994 in live-action form, and once again live-action as a direct-to-video release in 1998—and this latest version, created with a mixture of a live Mowgli and animated creatures and environments is undoubtedly the most breathtaking adventure of them all. Jon Favreau directs this episodic tale that strikes a balance between the tones of the 1967 film and the original stories, crafting an immersive, thrilling movie with lovable characters and a jungle that begs to be explored.
Raised by a pack of wolves, Mowgli (Neel Sethi) is ordered by his mentor, the black panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), to leave the jungle when the fearsome tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) makes it his mission to kill the man cub. As Mowgli makes his way through the jungle to a man village, he happens upon many dangerous creatures, and a friendly, huggable conman of a sloth bear named Baloo (Bill Murray). Though the story is a simple one, filled with various charming and strange encounters, no chapter wears out its welcome before moving along to the next one. Mowgli has a solid emotional through-line of growth and finding his place as a man among animals, and the beautiful scenery and wonderful vocal performances round out what makes the film work so well.
Sethi is a satisfactory Mowgli. As child performances go, his is neither grating nor wooden, and he has just enough spark to feel at home among the strong vocal talents Favreau has assembled. The best part of Sethi's performance actually has nothing to do with his facial expressions or line-readings, but is actually his ability to react to things that aren't really there. The Jungle Book was filmed on a soundstage in Downtown Los Angeles, with minimal scenery (select pieces of ground; puppets to approximate some animals), and the rest was created digitally. Sethi may not be a magnetic screen presence, but his performance never fails the film's illusion. Much like Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Sethi sells every second of his screen time opposite something that was added later.
Supporting Sethi is a vocal cast incredibly well-suited to each of their roles. Kingsley makes an excellent narrator and quasi-father figure, just as Murray seems to have been transformed into a lazy bear himself rather than just lent his voice to one. His Baloo is perfect (fun fact: Murray's brother Brian Doyle-Murray voiced Baloo in the 1998 film). Elba's Shere Khan is frightening with relatively limited time on screen, creating an ominous, imposing presence that lingers through scenes in which the tiger is merely mentioned. Giancarlo Esposito and Lupita Nyong'o are both regal as Mowgli's wolf parents, with Nyong'o's Raksha a particularly sympathetic maternal character who, like Shere Khan, is fully fleshed out despite her supporting role. Scarlett Johansson is, like Murray, perfectly suited to her role as Kaa, a giant, hypnotically seductive python. Johansson's silky voice, which has a sort of female Nat King Cole sound, has just the right quality to go with her slow delivery to make Kaa's extended cameo both soothing and creepy.
Continuing the unsettling vibe is Christopher Walken's King Louie, a character Louis Prima made a wacky swinger in the original film. Here he's rendered as a Gigantopithecus (one that looks like a giant orangutan) who has gone a bit mad ruling over his monkey kingdom, not unlike Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now*, and who now craves man's red flower (aka fire). Walken is wonderfully unhinged as the giant ape, with just enough crazy in his eyes (kudos to the animators) and voice to know he's not the jazzy creation Prima gave life to fifty years ago. In fact, when Walken's Louie sings "I Wanna Be Like You," its subtext is more menace than fun, knowing that he could crush Mowgli like a bug on a whim.
Favreau and screenwriter Justin Marks find the right balance of classic Disney Jungle Book songs and the adventure tone that permeates the film. When King Louie sings, it's him pleading his case to Mowgli and going off the deep end rather than the story stopping for a musical set-piece. The same can be said for "The Bare Necessities," which organically slips into the story because no character in this film seems more likely to whistle a happy tune about the good life than Bill Murray's Baloo. Kaa's "Trust in Me" is relegated to the end credits (which are delightful, and feature a jazzier Walken performance), and Johansson's rendition is so smooth it could pass as a Bond theme if it had more brass.
The most remarkable element of The Jungle Book is its immersive world created on computers and shown to us through Favreau and cinematographer Bill Pope's lens. Life of Pi demonstrated how a CGI tiger could be as endearing and tangible as the real thing, and this film takes that photorealism and applies it to nearly everything. Not a single frame of the film looks fake, and when you've got talking animals that's a true feat. I may have buried the lead by putting what is arguably The Jungle Book's biggest claim to fame this deep into my review, but it's a testament to the craft of the animators and digital artists that their work ultimately becomes invisible. Everything visual in The Jungle Book is so impeccably created that fifteen minutes into the movie I stopped looking at the film and started experiencing it. In a production as jam-packed with filmmaking wizardry as this one, that's about as good as it gets.
A Note on 3D: It's not often a film comes along that is improved by 3D, but The Jungle Book's beautiful world is one that only gets more immersive with that extra dimension. Whether it's a tree branch hanging in the foreground of a shot or blades of tall grass obscuring a hunting ground, the 3D in The Jungle Book is perfectly used without resorting to gags.
*I didn't think of this comparison myself, so full credit goes to Helen O'Hara on the Empire Podcast, which is where I heard it mentioned. It's too good a parallel to ignore.