Saturday, April 16, 2016

The Jungle Book | Gryphon's First Impressions


   


It feels weird being back to this, seems only yesterday I posted my thoughts on the casting for 2 Jungle Book movies that were coming out in the coming years. 1 down, 1 to go. 



First, I need to mention that I LOVE Disney's The Jungle Book. It was one of the movies that I watched the most as a kid, in fact I must have rented the VHS from Blockbuster all the time. It's not quite my favorite Disney animated movie, but I'll always have a soft spot for it. Since then Disney has tried to do several more adaptations of The Jungle Book (all of them in live-action), but none of them have come close to being as good as the animated version.
So when I heard about this new movie coming out, I was a bit worried. Then I saw the cast list, I got excited. I saw the trailers, I heard 'The Bare Necessities', I got REALLY excited. I just saw this movie yesterday, and I loved it so much!!!

 There was not a bad character in this movie. As I predicted the voice cast knocked it out of the park. Bill Murray was excellent as Baloo, Ben Kingsley did a great job as Bagheera, Scarlett Johanssan was good as Kaa and Idris Elba gave a haunting performance as Shere Kahn.

But the casting choice that concerned me the most was Neel Sethi as Mowgli. Child actors can sometimes break a movie, but not Neel. I really liked him, he never came off as annoying to me and his acting came off very natural (which is tricky to do seeing as how he was acting to almost nothing), I wouldn't mind seeing him in other movies.

Another part that I liked was the inclusion of the Wolves. One thing that always confused me about the original film was how the Wolves were not a big part of the story as they were in the book, they were in the first part and then never showed up again.
For this one, someone must've been like: "Oh yeah! There are Wolves in this story, let's use them!" and they did. Very well.
I loved the character Raksha (played by Lupita Nyong'o), Lupita gave such an emotional and caring preformance. It was actually a little sad to see her have to let go of Mowgli. She doesn't want to, but the threat posed by Shere Kahn is just to great.
Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) is also a good character, playing the stern leader of the pack but also a genuinely caring father for Mowgli.

OK, we need to talk about Christopher Walken as King Louie. He was freakin' AWESOME! I loved this character. Walken gave him kind of a Marlon Brando-esque demeanor and when he started singing 'I Wanna Be Like You', it was even better then I imagined it to be! Also, his scene had a Cowbell in it, that was just brilliant!

And yes there are songs in this movie, Baloo and Mowgli sing 'The Bare Necessities', and be sure to stay during the credits to hear Scarlett Johansson sing 'Trust in Me', which sounds like the theme to a James Bond movie. And the Score itself is cool too, in fact it was Walken that convinced me to buy the Soundtrack to this movie.

I guess the last thing to gush over with this movie would be the special effects. I mean, my god, the CGI in this film by WETA is INCREDIBLE! The Animals all look so photo realistic everytime they're on screen and the movements are so fluid. And I'll bet you'd never guess that the Jungle in this movie is all made out of sets on sound stages. I'm convinced WETA can do no wrong!

Bottom line: If you loved the original animated movie, you're gonna LOVE this version. It is by far the best live-action adaptation Disney has done to date and I was smiling like a little kid all throughout the entire film. Bring the kids and have a great time feeling like a kid again as I did.

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon
and I hope you've enjoyed your time here in my lair.
So long...

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