THE JUNGLE BOOK
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Disney Films borrows some character
names from Kipling, but not any story. Spectacular
Indian locations, beautiful photography, and a
powerful score are wasted on a mediocre and cliched
adventure film with little respect for the Kipling
it was nominally based on. Rating: low +1 (-4 to
+4)
An old cartoon shows someone asking "Do you like Kipling?" and getting the response "I don't know, I never Kipled." Certainly there is not much Kipling going on in Disney's sumptuous second film nominally based on Rudyard Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOKS. [Am I the only one who thinks the book's title was in the plural?] Indeed, while Kipling might enjoy the new film for its stupendous vision of India, with the exception of recognizing a few character names, mostly animals, he would find little in this film to remind him of his own writings either in plot or style. Besides Mowgli himself, the major characters of his Mowgli stories are all animals; in the film the animals are minor characters. The new film gives a (highly inaccurate) origin for Mowgli and then entirely skips over the period that the book covers and returns to Mowgli as an adult (now played by Jason Scott Lee). Mowgli has picked up martial arts someplace and is now ready to interact with the Man-pack. In fact when he does what we have has is much more the plotting of a Tarzan movie with the setting moved to India. But even if that is so, admittedly it is a highly watchable Tarzan movie.
In the Kipling, Mowgli is a baby who has strayed from his village and nearly killed by Shere Khan, the great tiger. The Man-cub is raised by wolves. In the new film version, Mowgli is about five years old and already has facility handling elephants when he is separated from his caravan and thought to have been killed. Why he has never returned to civilization remains unexplained since he seems to have a city with a major fort just a day or two's walk away. However, he remains in his jungle until he sees and is attracted to Catherine (Lena Headly), the beautiful daughter of the commander of the fort (Sam Neill). She is already being courted by a handsome young soldier (Cary Elwes) who is a favorite of the commander, but of course the audience knows that he is a treacherous cad and a bounder to boot. When the nasty young soldier realizes that Mowgli must know the way to a legendary lost treasure city, all the expected happens.
On top of the plotting being sophomoric, it is didactic. Kipling's animals live by the Law of the Jungle, a complex and logical code which includes rules like not to kill Man as well as rules like when it is legal to take another's prey. In this version it is changed into modernistic rules of conservation. The major rule is "do not kill what you cannot eat." And the animals enforce these rules on humans. In fact, Mowgli is first stranded in the jungle when Shere Khan attacks his caravan because the travelers had killed more animals than they could eat. (This is an heroic and selfless action for Shere Khan ... totally out of character.) The heroes of THE JUNGLE BOOK all seem to have late 20th Century American values while the villains are all politically incorrect.
Another interesting problem with the film is the placing of jungle so near the fort. (In fact, the fortress is Jodhpur's breath-taking Meherangarh Fort. Having explored the 15th Century fort myself-- perhaps the term "walled city" is more accurate--I can tell you the name Meherangarh, or "majestic," is no exaggeration. But perhaps the film makes that obvious.) Even if the fort is supposed to be just some generic fort, the architecture is Rajasthani. You will probably see that style only in dry country a very long distance from any tropical jungle such as we see in other parts of this story. The decision to film the fort over-looking Jodhpur is purely an aesthetic one. This is a very beautifully photographed film. The clarity and detail of the shots and the use of color may be the best of any film I have seen this year. Disney Studios has a reputation for making high-quality prints. The score by the underrated Basil Polidouris only adds to the lush and rich texture.
The acting, as directed by Stephen Sommers, is generally acceptable though Jason Scott Lee is an odd casting choice for Mowgli. He does not look so much Indian as Oriental. Cary Elwes makes a reasonable villain who snidely personifies all that was wrong with the British Raj. Unfortunately, some of the worst acting comes from the animals who just followed direction without worrying about their careers--more is the pity. The apes in particular behave like fugitives from the Cheetah School of Bad Animal Acting. And I wonder what an orangutan is doing in the jungles of India. Rudyard Kipling treated the animals as characters but in this film the apes are sort of a Greek chorus and the rest are little more than additional fists for Mowgli to use against his enemies.
Taken as a Tarzan film or a sequel to the Kipling story, this is a watchable children's film. But putting Kipling's name over the title is gross mis-representation. The pity is that such care was taken with the visual aspects of a film so betrayed by the scripting. Parts of this film are terrific, parts are just awful. On balance this one gets a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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