Very disappointing...

Truly Dreadful Film

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

I will not participate in the internet debate whether this film is better or worse than the animated "The Jungle Book", because this is not an adaptation of a cartoon from 1967, but a completely different story, based on the same characters. While the cartoon follows the adventures of the boy Mowgli, surrounded by animals who think and speak as human beings, the feature film shows the adult Mowgli, and the animals are real animals, without attributing human traits, and Mowgli communicates with them in their "languages". I'm a bit surprised by the amount and the explicitity of violence, injury and death, since this is a Disney movie, which means it is primarily intended for children. Camera that zooms a man drowning and finally dying in quicksand isn't exactly a sight suitable for children. Jason Scott Lee is visually perfect choice and has played a great role. Of the more famous, there are Cersei Lannister and John Cleese, but the animals carry main role and the charm of this film. About 200 trained wild animals were used. For tiger scenes, only the most indispensable staff remained on the set and the blue screen was used, but many scenes with wildlife are completely authentic, which leaves a stronger impression than the best CGI. Although it tells another story, the film retains Kipling's spirit and respects the "law of the jungle": You can kill only to eat or to avoid being eaten.8/10Mowgli: "Then do you eat him?" Boone: " No, of course not." M: "Does he want to eat you?" B: "Why, no." M: "Then why kill him?" B: "Because he is your enemy." M: "What is enemy?" B: "Someone you hate." M: "What is hate?"

Walt Disney was obsessed with Kipling's Jungle Book, it was his greatest dream to make his version of it, but he failed from the beginning, dying before having had the possibility to supervise the cartoon version of 1966, which in its failure to realize his visions did not live up to them. His work on Kipling was thereby left unfinished. As if they felt some duty of his legacy, his followers kept following up on Mowgli, and there were two more Disney Jungle Books to come, the first a full feature film with live men and animals, and the second concentrating entirely on the animal world. Both are great successes, although the first almost becomes anti-Kipling in its turning British soldiers into typical shallow Disney villains, you couldn't imagine anything less gentlemanly or Kiplingesque, and of course they are doomed from the beginning, like all Disney's demonizations, and the second is a remake, although better, of the 1967 cartoon but with astounding impersonation of the animals. This second version tells an entirely different story, departing demonstrably from Kipling, concentrating on the ankus incident and its problems of greed and human short-sightedness, but it's a wonderful film, and all the major characters are there. The monkey episode is given a new slant of delightful good humor, underscoring the main character of the film as delightful in its splendor all the way. None of the animals speak in this film but are the more expressive, especially Shere Klhan, who is only in for the killing but with a vengeance, turning him into the film's triumph. The Disney mark is here: any animal is better than any man.And that is as far as you can get from Kipling. None of the three Disney Jungle Books have lived up to an ounce of the Kipling poetry, which is the main blood of his Jungle Book, but nevertheless, the ingenious conclusion of this film, which couldn't be more Disney, is just as good a story as anything of Kipling's.The outstanding music score adds to its qualities, bringing it almost all the way to a full 10 points.

This is an interesting movie but I was rather misled when I came to hire it. I assumed that the original Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling had a lot of Christian anecdotes in it, though I have never read it. Upon seeing this movie I thought that it would be based closed to the book and with the suggestion of a couple of others, decided to show this film to a group of kids at an Easter Mission at Normanville. They said the movie was okay but as I watched it I was regretting that I actually chose this movie. I thought that it would have Christian anecdotes but it did not. I had a gut feeling that it did not follow the book and after reading Ebert's review I discovered that I was right. Basically, I should have shown three Vegetale videos instead.This movie seems to follow more of an Indiana Jones style movie than anything else. It contains lost treasure filled cities brimming with traps and an evil imperial empire seeking to find it and steal it for themselves. The place is the far reaches of India during the time of the British occupation and they are seeking to tame the wild land with their civilisation. This is the one theme of the movie that stands out and it is the taming of the wild. The jungle is wild and the British seek to tame it. The only problem is is that they cannot. The Black Jungle is the place which nobody enters because it is untameable.The story focuses on a boy named Mogli who is lost as a child during a tiger attack on a camp. He grows up in the jungle with a wolf, a bear, and a panther. These animals are his close friends but they seem to fall into the background when Mogli returns to civilisation. This is when the British decide to attempt to civilise him. At first they don't want to, they would rather beat him up until he shows them to the treasure, but later, when it is discovered that he was the child of somebody who saved the major's life, he is then released and they attempt to civilise him.I think it is bad to deceive an audience by the title of a movie, and I don't know how the ratings people hand out ratings, but I thought that this was not really a children's movie with the amount of blood, people sinking into quicksand and being buried alive in temple traps.

***These are the spoilers***What an interesting piece of film here. Alright, well, I'll give my two cents here. It starts out with Mowgli, a young Indian boy, bonding with a young British girl named Catherine, who, like he, lost her mother when she was a baby. Things go wrong and Mowgli's father is mauled by a tiger, Mowgli himself being cast into and lost in the jungle. He bonds with the animals and loses himself to it, effectively becoming a savage, and donning a loincloth to boot.Years later, he finds a hidden city in the jungle and a massive treasure. But when he tries to get back Catherine's bracelet, he is attacked by a huge snake. After a desperate and losing struggle, he barely escapes the vicious reptile with his life and the bracelet. The next day, we see Catherine, who has developed into a beautiful and intelligent young woman, opposite Mowgli's cumbersome and illiterate character. They meet and Catherine flees into the arms of her fiancé, Captain William Boone, who, along with his friends, proceeds to fight Mowgli, which results in Mowgli being shot in the arm.Mowgli tries to meet Catherine in the British fort, but he is beaten down and captured. Over the rest of the course of the film, Catherine, her doctor, and her father attempt to teach Mowgli to read and speak proper English, which they succeed in to some degree. But ultimately, the jungle boy answers the 'call of the wild' and returns, but Boone wants the treasure he found. Along with his buddies, William tracks down Mowgli and forces him to lead him to the treasure. Once there, he attempts to kill Mowgli, and nearly kills the savage, but is killed by the same snake that attacked Mowgli earlier. Mowgli and Catherine fall in love, the end.***Spoilers end here***Very interesting. There were some things about it that are obviously intended for older audiences. Throughout most of the movie, Mowgli wears nothing more than a loincloth, rendering him effectively naked for the majority of the movie, while his enemies wear full clothing. Obviously not intended for kids. In one sequence, he is seen fighting a large (and fully clothed) man atop a cliff, nearly being beaten off the edge. I even wonder if there wasn't some grounds for a racist argument in there. In the final sequence, Mowgli (a naked Indian man) was attacked by William (a fully-clothed British man), and stumbled clumsily around to avoid William's deadly swordplay. I won't point fingers, but it's there.Anyway, good movie, if you like watching naked people get shot at and beaten around by not-naked people. Nah, it's a good film, and you should watch it if you're over 9, I would say. 8 out of 10.