This review was first published during the initial release of this film.
I saw The Jungle Book with my mother and brother about a week and a half after my buddy and his mother saw it. Evidently the Walt Disney Corporation still holds a patent on all of our childhoods for better or for worse. But unlike other Disney remakes of Disney films, such as Cinderella or even Freaky Friday, The Jungle Book was different.
Favreau clearly holds Zoltan Korda’s 1942 adaptation of Kipling’s fables in high esteem. Not only does he create visual echoes of Korda’s film, but drew upon it aesthetically in terms of the designs of the CGI animals. The effect of combining the Romanticism of Korda’s The Jungle Book with the original Disney animation of 1967’s whimsy and lyricism makes for a freshness that I had assumed left the studio with Don Bluth.
That is not to say that The Jungle Book is flawless or some sort of masterpiece. The Jungle Book’s greatest flaws are born out of an overindulgence of the action spectacle. The forest fire that concludes the film is so preposterous in scope and execution that by its very artifice it reassures the audience that good will triumph over evil yet again.
