Friday 27 May 2016

The Jungle Book (Favreau, 2016)

Can I just start by saying that I love the original animated version of the The Jungle Book (Reitherman) from 1967. I would say that from where I stand on the remakes I'm always kind of like 'no, why Disney why? Just leave it alone. The original is amazing you can't top that' and I wouldn't say that I was wrong with that statement to an extent. Because to me those movies can't be beat by anything not even their new counterparts that were produced by the same company. The animated movies resonate with me in a way that these new live action remakes just can't.

Ok, ok, it may just be because I simply love animation and I grew up with those films. Those two factors make me insanely biased but I shall still say that these new versions are not as good as the animated features they come from. However, that does NOT mean that these movies are bad, in fact The Jungle Book (Favreau, 2016) is shockingly gorgeous (I do have a few less stellar notes but I'll get to those in a minute), the CGI is astounding. The acting by Neel Sethi is rather good and I can certainly see him making a name for himself in the upcoming months and years to come.

But, Disney are not doing great with the casting of their voice actors at the moment. I have an issue with the casting of Elsa in Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013) she just doesn't sound right, and that seems to have occurred again in this live action Jungle Book. Myself, and the two friends that I saw the feature with, all agreed that some of the voices just weren't quite what we were expecting and even exactly what we were expecting. The voice of Kaa, Scarlett Johansson, was not quite right, she just wasn't scary more seductive. I didn't think it would be hard to be scarier than the original voice of Kaa, bearing in mind the same voice actor also leant his voice to Winnie the Pooh but she didn't quite manage it, although I wasn't exactly expecting that she could. The other much more surprising disappointment was Idris Elba as Shere Khan whom was scary but also not at all scary, because his voice didn't quite fit the character in a similar way to Idina Menzel in Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013).

Overall, I would totally recommend this film. I can get past the two voices that I didn't quite like and the few scenes that they cut out quite disappointingly. My only warning would be don't go in thinking it's going to be an exact remake, which would be silly enough a notion anyhow, but it is a different film. Same story, different film almost entirely.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars


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