Ok, I’ll admit I was curious. Curious mainly because my last memory of this kind of animation in a movie was The Chronicles of Narnia and… let’s say it’s not a very fond memory. And though I loved the book to bits, I have never been such a fan of the cartoon from an animation point of view, mainly because it looked like Robin Hood without arrows. Anyway, my curiosity grew after hearing this, such a sexy twist to Kaa I just had to go and see the movie for myself.
Was I disappointed?
Well, my expectations were very low, but I must say that I was impressed by certain aspects, and at the highest level.
1. Direction
You might get the impression of watching a documentary clip, from time to time, but a good one. One of those documentaries that give you goosebumps. It’s as if someone took The Jungle Book (Disney) and gave it Tarzan‘s direction (still Disney): sceneries are majestic, rhytm is well balanced between a very fast pace and those rare pauses it takes, both intimate and imbibed with unparalleled grandeur. Jon Favreau goes Ironman on us, with explosions and blazing fire, stampedes out of The Lion King and monkey kings out of King Kong. It looks like a movie he thoroughly enjoyed doing, thus it’s highly enjoyable to watch.
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2. Soundtrack
The original Jungle Book had an amazing, revolutionary soundtrack and it was almost impossible to top it off by walking on the same path. There are of course hints and reprises: the python song being one (unfortunately only in the end credits), The Bare Necessities being the most famous, Kind Louie’s song being the less succesful. Unsurprisingly, the original, one and only Richard M. Sherman had a part in re-writing and re-arranging the original tracks for the movie. But if you think you’ll have a nostalgic quotationist soundtrack, you’ll be surprised. John Debney does, here, an incredible job of delicacy.
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3. Animals
Well, of course. Just let me explain what I liked about it, and then you can say if I’m eight years old (’cause I probably am).
I never like CGI animals. They always turn out somehow off. They turn out, to quote what Empire has said about The Revenant‘s grizzly, a mix between the demon Pazuzu and uncle Pastuzo. Not good. Not good at all.
Talking animals, on top of everything, are just the worst. You have these poor beasts moving their lips to try to spell sounds nature clearly hasn’t provided them to spell, ’cause if she did… well, let’s say I could have whole new conversations with my neighbour’s cat. So no, I never like them and they scare me just as much as children on screen (more on that later).
Tecniques used on these animals seemed somehow an improvement.
Not that they found a way to have them talk in a convincing way: they just realized it’s not possible, and decided not to. So, when animals’ voices are heard, you either have them thinking (90% of the time with Bagheera) or facing elsewhere (70% of the time with Akela) or growling words through their fangs (100% of the time with Shere Khan). And it works, it works wonderfully.
Also, I appreciated the natural proportions not being completely respected. The tiger is huge as it’s supposed to be, the bear slightly smaller and less intimidating (of course) and wolves are almost a domestic size. The metaphorical value that those animals held in the book almost comes through, and it certainly holds more value in this movie that it did in the original buffoonesque cartoon.
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4. The kid
Don’t get me wrong, I dislike kids. On screen and not on screen. Still, Neel Sethi was managed in such a way that he didn’t turn out to be annoying, even to me, and that was quite an accomplishment.
5. Differences
Well, of course there are differences. And it doesn’t make sense to compare book and movie: the most interesting differences you can get by comparing movie and cartoon. It’s clear, once again, that in Disney’s opinion we got more delicate, and somewhat more stupid. Hence, it’s not enough that the tiger hates humans for a race reason: he has to hate humans for a personal reasons (he was disfigured by man’s fire) and reasons has to be so personal it wasn’t enough to have just any human to disfigure him. Hence, everything has to be explained or hinted to from the beginning. Hence, the bittersweet finale you got in the cartoon gets twisted around. Mowgli doesn’t have to grow up, he doesn’t have to embrace his true self and turn his back to the jungle, but he can stay with his fellow animals. Now I’m sure this is what the audience want. Still, I can’t shake this feeling that some of the original poetry got lost, became conveniently happy. Disney used to prepare you, somehow, for when you had to stop caring just about the bare necessities, for when you had to leave the jungle. I don’t know what will happen when this generation will be told that they have to do it as well. Probably they’ll look up, and asks us why. And I wonder if they’ll hate us because we never told them that before.
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