TARZAN ** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers ( tarzan@filmfreakcentral.net )
starring the voices of Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Brian Blessed screenplay by Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker, Noni White, based on 'Tarzan Of The Apes" by Edgar Rice Burroughs directed by Chris Buck and Kevin Lima
Parody him, give him a syndicated television series, put a tuxedo on him, it doesn't matter: to paraphrase Led Zeppelin, Tarzan remains the same; he's a simplistic tribute to primeval man. The basic story of a baby abandoned in the jungle who is raised by apes has been filmed more times than any other, if only because Burrough's book is in the public domain. Now that Disney has appropriated the character for use in its annual summer cartoon, I'm not even sure I can type "Tarzan" without the Registered Trademark symbol. And just because they've animated him doesn't mean they've liberated him: Disney's swift, agile Tarzan is, personality-wise, as yawn inducing as previous incarnations. The movie itself is an uneasy hybrid of conflicting formulas.
Tarzan commences with a rousing sequence that depicts the parallel lives of Tarzan's parents and parents-to-be. Shipwrecked, Tarzan's human mother and father build a treehouse, and successfully tend to their baby until disaster strikes in the form of a hungry leopard. Kala (Close), a mother gorilla whose new child was similarly devoured, discovers Tarzan squirming in a cradle and adopts him instantly; her husband, Kerchak (Lance Henriksen), refuses to acknowledge the boy as a son based solely on his human appearance. The years pass, and Tarzan learns to negotiate the forest like his ape protectors. Then he encounters Jane (Driver), who is on expedition with her father and a big game hunter named Clayton (Blessed); they are three people who look more like him than anyone else in the jungle, so he suffers a brief but potent crisis of identity.
Two gaping plot holes occurred to me as I watched Tarzan '99. First, let me establish that Tarzan and his primate friends speak English for our sake, but it's understood that they're babbling variations of "Oo-oo-ee-ee-ah-ah" to each other. So why is Tarzan able to introduce himself to Jane as "Tarzan"?
Then there's the issue of Clayton. Everybody's inexplicably surprised when he betrays his escorts and sets trap for the gorillas. If the Snidely Whiplash-moustache and double-barreled shotgun were not clues enough, surely the fact that he excitedly asked Tarzan over and over again "Where are the gorillas?" was a bold sign that he had ulterior motives for being in Africa.
The film rehashes the The Lion King's irritating time-compression technique: Tarzan's formative years are skipped entirely with a lap dissolve of preteen Tarzan to adult Tarzan-the film misses its only opportunity to be innovative by dismissing his maturation. What would adolescence be like for Tarzan? If one was raised by apes, would(n't) one develop a sexual attraction to some of them? The film hints at a burgeoning romance between Tarzan and Turk, a girlla, that is interrupted by the arrival of Jane, but if Turk has more than platonic feelings, they remain as subtext.
Such depth, not to mention a beastiality subplot, would be out of place in a Disney film, anyway. After said opening, Tarzan goes bland. (This includes Phil Collins' song score, which is elevator music for the wild.) It answers questions of racism and gun control with a big smiley face. It preaches against poaching only slightly more effectively than last year's lame remake of Mighty Joe Young. It provides unnecessary, obnoxious sidekicks for our hero in the form of the aforementioned Turk (Rosie O'Donnell in a grating vocal performance) and an aw-shucks elephant named Tantor (Wayne Knight). It offers not a single moment of surprise in its climax. None of this quite meshes with the conventions of Burrough's Tarzan tales-I can't determine which recipe has been shoehorned into the other. (Does it occur to children weaned on the new Disney movies that they're watching the same story over and over again? Pocahontas, Mulan, and Tarzan fit into the same rigid paradigm, yet they're respectively based on an American legend, Chinese folklore, and a beloved modern mythology.)
One aspect of this Tarzan does enthrall. I'm talking about its resplendent design, of course, a seamless blend of digital and traditional animation techniques-the two are most complementary during the "Deep Canvas" action scenes, which will undoubtedly be diminished on the small screen. (They are perhaps reason enough to see Tarzan at the cinema.) Tarzan soars through the trees like a surfer coasting on an imaginary wave (indeed, his liquid movements were modeled after one animator's skateboarding kid). If only he defied our expectations as well as gravity.
-June, 1999
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