The Jungle Book full movie

After a threat from the tiger Shere Khan forces him to flee the jungle, a man-cub named Mowgli embarks on a journey of self discovery with the help of panther, Bagheera, and free spirited bear, Baloo.

Details

Official Sites:Official Site | Official Site [Spain] |

Country:USA | UK
Language:English
Release Date:15 April 2016 (USA)
Also Known As:El libro de la selva
Filming Locations:Los Angeles, California, USA

Writers:Justin Marks (screenplay), Rudyard Kipling (book)Stars:Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley

Director:Jon Favreau

Storyline

The man-cub Mowgli flees the jungle after a threat from the tiger Shere Khan. Guided by Bagheera the panther and the bear Baloo, Mowgli embarks on a journey of self-discovery, though he also meets creatures who don't have his best interests at heart.

User Reviews

The good news is that it is already possible to produce such a film convincingly, half way between animation and live action. Or should i say, animated live action. There are no human faces or bodies here except for Mowgli (and a couple silhouettes in one scene in the human village.

What fails here to me, is that not very much is made out of the freeing possibilities that a computer rendered jungle and animals give you, at least not in terms of camera movement.

But two amazing things were made here:

1. the old temple, occupied by King Louie is the most impressive set. The courtyard and the guts of the building are amazing as a space specifically conceived for a certain piece of story line. Check how the light penetrates the courtyard, and how its use advances the action. Bagheera and Baloo go through the dark hall, into light, and Louie stays opposite, in the shadow. Faces show in light whenever needed. Space tied to storytelling is one of the best things someone can give me in film, and this film would be worth it just for that sequence alone;

2. Almost every animal character is rendered expressively. We can now live among animals and beasts without having to go to animation;

The jungle is pretty enough, i guess, but just pretty. Mowgli's kidnapping scene by the monkeys was built in a blurry lazy fashion, and i wonder how could the same people who conceived the temple sequence allow for such a boring nothing.

I would like to see this technology and this story told by someone more meditative and who acknowledges the power of the language. Not unlike Shakespeare, Kipling's images are hampered by language. He is mostly and foremost a poet, a man of visual imagination who produces his imagination with language. As one would expect from a Disney box- office oriented production, all risks were minimized, so the characters (and how they speak) were simplified. For politic correctness sake, they also watered down the racist and colonialist views of Kipling, without subverting them deliberately, kind of leaving it ambiguously halfway. Maybe if the USA elects Trump they remake this...

They got storytelling and space in the temple sequence, but they didn't make the effort to try and tie the sense of place to the language that forms Kipling's vision. Instead they replaced language with nice sets, which are nevertheless not so sweet as to make me forget the original poetry. I guess that's a conundrum: when you are willing to take chances you usually don't have access to the kind of ambitious industrial machinery of such a company as Disney; yet when you do get behind the wheel of such a studio, the high budget means that you have to minimize risks...