Recently I got to see ‘The Jungle Book’ in theatres, and I can say it was stunningly beautiful with the CGI, the animals all looked fantastic and the actor/voice actors were great. But I have to say it was missing something and I am not sure what.
‘The Jungle Book’ is about a young boy by the name of Mowgli (played by the fresh face of film Neel Sethi who was great as Mowgli), who grew up in the jungle, raised by wolves, and was called a ‘Man Cub’ and was treated like an outsider, particularly if he used his ‘tricks’ which were inventions he created with resources from the jungle. His Alpha, Akela (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) discouraged him of using such ‘tricks’; he needs to learn the wolf way to belong. The only animal who truly accepted his ideas and inventions was Baloo (voiced by Bill Murray) who used Mowgli to get him honey.
Mowgli was hunted by Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba), the tiger, who stands to be the dangerous animal in the jungle. But with the help of his pal and founder, Bagheera the panther (voiced by Ben Kingsley) he was quickly taken away to find the man village.
This movie follows the old Disney film but with different changes which would be close to the actual book. It was a lovely story and very gripping, but I couldn’t help but think there was something missing in this film, I really enjoyed it, but I think there maybe some hit and miss parts. I loved that they kept a couple of the original songs, but I really didn’t like King Louie’ ‘I wanna be like you’ version in this film (who was voiced by Christopher Walken).
This film is worth seeing and great to see on the big screen, and especially because its school holidays, although, majority of the audience were my age (23) and up!
It was a lovely story, with a great cast, so I give this film 4 stars: ★★★★
For more information, go to the IMDB page here
The poster was used from here
