The Jungle Book
This review contains spoilers
This movie is overrated. Here are some of the key problems I have with it:
Bagheera is initially established to be a guardian angel from afar, but it doesn't take long for him to become such an unlikable dipshit. He doesn't know how to communicate with Mowgli, he abandons him three damn times, and he's selfish as hell.
Share Khan is the entire reason that Bagheera is taking Mowgli to the man village, but after his initial discussion with him, everybody just completely forgets that the tiger even exists up until the halfway point of the movie. Seriously, Bagheera could've mentioned Shere Khan to Baloo at any point in time, but waits until the bear forms a strong relationship with Mowgli to tell him because the movie needed there to be some kind of conflict to pad it out for another 40 minutes or so. So up until then, it's just "birds of a feather should flock together". Bite me.
Seriously, some of the characters' motivations font make any sense. Like, by the time Mowgli finally does have his close encounter with Shere Khan, that should've been the biggest thing factoring into his decision to go to the man village. If it weren't for Baloo jumping in for the save at the last second, Mowgli would've been dead. But no, it's just that he oogled at a female human and was like "oh, okay". Share Khan wasn't even part of the equation anymore after that.
Oh, and by the way, there's a lot of nothing happening in this movie, leading to a lot of characters being filler for the most part. Colonel Hathi's jungle patrol goes on a volunteer mission to find Mowgli after he runs away, bit then we never see them again after they depart. Kaa the Snake just seems like he's only there to flex an idea for the animation, King Louie has a good song meant to establish his motive for being in the movie but his arc doesn't go anywhere, and Shere Khan, who is supposed to be the entire driving force of the plot, just doesn't really get much time for his character to be fleshed out except for him just enjoying being the most terrifying thing in the jungle. It's just that a lot of these characters either needed time to cook or just shouldn't have been in the movie in the first place (Obviously, the former is much more preferred, even if it meant extending the run time).
Now it's not all doom and gloom, though. There were a couple of things I liked. Some of the songs were pretty good; What Friends Are For was definitely the best one and doesn't get much love from mainstream audiences. I absolutely loved the vultures as a whole. They can banter around with others in good fun, but they quickly recognized when Mowgli was down on his luck and legitimately try to cheer him up in a very charming way-- even going so far as to directly use the song as a way to do so with how they invite him to partake in the performance. They were hands down the best characters in the whole movie. Hell, it was the best scene in the movie.
As for Baloo, I was expecting him to be overrated as hell, but he was surprisingly pretty good. I like the whole "best bum" angle that they went with and how he was even teaching Mowgli how to defend himself when they first meet. The forming of their relationship seemed really organic and I can totally see how a kid could connect with his personality.
And then there's Kaa's animation... yeah, that's about it.
So yeah, I honestly don't see the appeal in this movie. If it was great at one point, it certainly hasn't aged as well as it should've. Funny how the music is really the only thing that most people seem to remember about it because when you actually look at the substance, there doesn't seem to be a lot to it outside of a small handful of things.
Bagheera is initially established to be a guardian angel from afar, but it doesn't take long for him to become such an unlikable dipshit. He doesn't know how to communicate with Mowgli, he abandons him three damn times, and he's selfish as hell.
Share Khan is the entire reason that Bagheera is taking Mowgli to the man village, but after his initial discussion with him, everybody just completely forgets that the tiger even exists up until the halfway point of the movie. Seriously, Bagheera could've mentioned Shere Khan to Baloo at any point in time, but waits until the bear forms a strong relationship with Mowgli to tell him because the movie needed there to be some kind of conflict to pad it out for another 40 minutes or so. So up until then, it's just "birds of a feather should flock together". Bite me.
Seriously, some of the characters' motivations font make any sense. Like, by the time Mowgli finally does have his close encounter with Shere Khan, that should've been the biggest thing factoring into his decision to go to the man village. If it weren't for Baloo jumping in for the save at the last second, Mowgli would've been dead. But no, it's just that he oogled at a female human and was like "oh, okay". Share Khan wasn't even part of the equation anymore after that.
Oh, and by the way, there's a lot of nothing happening in this movie, leading to a lot of characters being filler for the most part. Colonel Hathi's jungle patrol goes on a volunteer mission to find Mowgli after he runs away, bit then we never see them again after they depart. Kaa the Snake just seems like he's only there to flex an idea for the animation, King Louie has a good song meant to establish his motive for being in the movie but his arc doesn't go anywhere, and Shere Khan, who is supposed to be the entire driving force of the plot, just doesn't really get much time for his character to be fleshed out except for him just enjoying being the most terrifying thing in the jungle. It's just that a lot of these characters either needed time to cook or just shouldn't have been in the movie in the first place (Obviously, the former is much more preferred, even if it meant extending the run time).
Now it's not all doom and gloom, though. There were a couple of things I liked. Some of the songs were pretty good; What Friends Are For was definitely the best one and doesn't get much love from mainstream audiences. I absolutely loved the vultures as a whole. They can banter around with others in good fun, but they quickly recognized when Mowgli was down on his luck and legitimately try to cheer him up in a very charming way-- even going so far as to directly use the song as a way to do so with how they invite him to partake in the performance. They were hands down the best characters in the whole movie. Hell, it was the best scene in the movie.
As for Baloo, I was expecting him to be overrated as hell, but he was surprisingly pretty good. I like the whole "best bum" angle that they went with and how he was even teaching Mowgli how to defend himself when they first meet. The forming of their relationship seemed really organic and I can totally see how a kid could connect with his personality.
And then there's Kaa's animation... yeah, that's about it.
So yeah, I honestly don't see the appeal in this movie. If it was great at one point, it certainly hasn't aged as well as it should've. Funny how the music is really the only thing that most people seem to remember about it because when you actually look at the substance, there doesn't seem to be a lot to it outside of a small handful of things.
Mini Review: I honestly don't see the appeal in this movie. If it was great at one point, it certainly hasn't aged as well as it should've. Funny how the music is really the only thing that most people seem to remember about it because when you actually look at the substance, there doesn't seem to be a lot to it outside of a small handful of things.
Watch the Trailer