The Jungle Book

Jon Favreau – 2016 – USA

I quite wanted to like this movie, which I believe is the third adaptation by Disney following the 1967 animated classic and the 1994 live-action version, (though there have been many other remakes, sequels and knock-offs too).  I’m a big fan of Rudyard Kipling’s anthology of stories that comprise the two Jungle Books, published in 1894 and 1895 respectively, as well as Alexander Korda’s sublime 1942 film starring Sabu as Mowgli.  The thing that struck me immediately about Jon Favreau’s version is its oppressive artificiality and total lack of exoticism.  The GCI characters are blurry and unconvincing, and when their animal mouths articulate dialogue in American English, it’s pretty absurd, distractingly so.  The celebrity vocal performances are surprisingly weak and barely seem to match the action and mood of the scenes at all.  Mowgli himself – one of the most beloved of all fictional characters for his mischievousness, cunning and humane dignity – is portrayed, (in typical kids-movie fashion) as a wisecracking middle-class brat with a beautifully bland contemporary American dialect.  Why make the character Indian in appearance at all if his voice is arrogantly modern?  And that leads to the most basic problem with the film; it’s complete divorce from any feeling of taking place in the wilderness of 19th century India.  Everything is so pristine and fanciful that it looks like a cross between Avatar and Disneyland’s animatronic Jungle Ride.  There is no real sense of danger, let alone genuine beauty.  Anything not computer generated seems to be a polished studio set.  Kipling’s literary characters were noble and spoke in poetic language.  Favreau’s characters are out of a 21st century TV sit-com; sarcastic, eye-rolling and uttering phrases like “really?”, “pretty cool” and “my bad.”  Since filmmakers are so unwary about returning to this same well over and over again, I wonder when one of them will actually demonstrate that he has any actual respect or even familiarity with the Kipling stories.  There are so many adaptations; why not make just one of them in the anthology fashion of the books instead of always turning it into an epic about Mowgli?  Where’s Toomai of the Elephants?  Where’s mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi?  Where’s Kotick, the white seal?  Oh well, I suppose if this movie was great I wouldn’t be bothered with such thoughts; but it isn’t.  I was ready to check out about the time of a ludicrous scene in which Mowgli kicks at a honeycomb swarming with bees and is not only barely attacked but barely annoyed by the handful of stings he does receive.  How are you supposed to be moved or concerned when this same kid goes up against a man-eating tiger in the middle of a burning forest?