The Jungle Book is a new live action/CGI take on the beloved Disney classic. The famed story is directed this time by Jon Favreau, the man responsible for the box office success, "Iron Man," using a star-studded cast of actors.
(I mean star studded: we’retalking Giancarlo Esposito, Sir Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Lupita Nyong’o, Idris Elba, and Christopher Walken. It’s THAT good).
The best part of all of this is, they’re all voice actors. Throughout the entire movie, there’s only one real live actor. Beautifully executed, it’s hard to find fault with the superbly done CGI (and the scenes with monkeys had me breath taken).
It’s a hallmark achievement for CGI movies. The same goes for acting. Acting wise, it requires one person to act by himself. A 12 year old boy, Neel Sethi, plays the lead character of Mowgli. Every other character is a CGI animal. Despite the difficulty of the role, and his inexperience as an actor, Neel puts on a sterling performance.
It almost goes without saying, the others beside them did a stunning job. Even better, director Favreau maintained the musical element of the movie, incorporating its famous songs. Christopher Walken sings a perfect rendition of “I wanna be like you”, check it out on YouTube if you got the time.
Overall, Jon Favreau delivers to the world a stunning, perfect Disney film delivered the right way. The phrase “So Disney” comes to mind.
It brought the heartwarming, serious tale, with the light hearted, family oriented flavor of fun. The action is spot on, and can tear at heartstrings.
Mowgli is raised by wolves in the jungle and gets on with mostly everyone. Things however, take a turn for the worse when Shere Khan arrives. The tiger wants to kill the human, and chases him across the jungle, before taking over Mowgli’s wolf pack family. Fighting ensues, and the young man-cub defeats Shere Khan to free the jungle of his vile presence.
If you haven’t seen this yet, I suggest you most definitely do.
