The Jungle Book
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Features
• Anamorphic
• Full Screen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 25 December, 1994 |
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The Jungle Book description
Disney scrapped the songs and talking animals for its second version of Rudyard Kipling's classic novel, an old-fashioned boy's adventure that more resembles the classic Korda brothers' lush original than Disney's own animated musical. In this live-action version, Jason Scott Lee (the hunky star of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) is the grown Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves and taught the ways of the jungle by Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther. Fascinated by Englishwoman Lena Heady, whom he spots marching through the jungle on a safari, he follows her to the city. She teaches him the ways of polite society while a greedy British soldier (a sneering Cary Elwes) plots to discover the fabled lost city, where a fabulous fortune awaits. At this point the film becomes more Tarzan than Kipling. Lee's rippling form, back in the freedom of a loin cloth, is on display running through the jungle, swinging on vines, and going mano a mano with snooty Englisher Elwes. His charm and sex appeal has made this film a favorite of many adult women, but it is a family adventure, after all, with colorful locations, grand sets, and plenty of fun-loving animal moments. Sam Neill is his usual figure of moral strength as Heady's explorer father, and John Cleese imparts a little deadpan humor as the safari's absent-minded professor. Director Stephen Sommers went on to direct the 1999 action fantasy hit The Mummy. Ages 6 and up. --Sean Axmaker |
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The Jungle Book Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Love is what we need, even in the jungle
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A super production of 1994 that tried to recapture the magic of Kipling's novel. The emphasis is on the love Mowgli feels for Kitty, though we could not understand Kitty if she did not love Mowgli's beautiful body that he lets everyone contemplate and admire and his deep consciousness of the relationship between nature and man, between human fate and the law of nature the way it exists in the deep jungle of India. In other words she can only love this man who can speak to all animals and order them to speak or keep silent, especially when she looks at the officers of Her Majesty's army around her, human animals who only like killing, dominating, stealing and robbing. Vain, criminal and greedy as opposed to free, strong and generous. But by concentrating the film on this only love affair, the director and producers miss so many aspects of the book that are just as fascinating, like the detailed observation of human nature, of Indian society, of wild animals, of English men when their masculinity is at stake, and in those days their masculinity was always at stake which made them cruel in order to prove they were strong and human. It was a time when cruelty was part of a gentleman's education. This is mostly pushed aside in the film. And I must admit the elephants seem to be quite small in a way and the tiger should have been a lot more ferocious. But you can't really shoot a film like that with wild animals. Too bad. And quite many small animals of the jungle are just absent, like snakes, bees, flies and all the other flying, crawling or jumping insects. The film is then only entertaining, but after all it is intended for kids, and even if we are grown-up kids, we are no longer wearing short pants in the office and going to kindergarten.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne
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The Jungle Book dvd movie.