FILM REVIEW
Jon Favreau’s “The Jungle Book” is probably the greatest visual achievement since James Cameron’s “Avatar” and that’s a comparison I do not use lightly.
Films like “The Jungle Book” and “Avatar” work exhaustively to show not only the capabilities of modern cinematic technology, but also the realms of possibility when it comes to creating an entire world you feel like you’re escaping to.
Viewers are thrown into the deep regions of the jungle and focus on the man-cub Mowgli (Neel Sethi), who has grown up without parental supervision and been raised by a forest of talking animals, particularly a wolf pack. One day, a Bengal tiger named Shere Khan (Idris Elba) sees Mowgli and demands that he leave the jungle, due to his human scent possibly attracting predators to the community.
Eventually, after departing, Mowgli meets Baloo (Bill Murray), a gigantic brown bear who saves his life from a sinister snake. Baloo requests payment by way of climbing a steep mountain in order to get a bee-infested hive filled with honey.
To Baloo’s surprise, Mowgli actually retrieves the honeycomb, but not before getting stung multiple times. This quirky relationship eventually develops into a keen friendship between a wise, old bear with experience and a young, spirited boy looking to gain some, especially as the pressure of Shere Khan looms over time.
The voice acting in this film is truly a marvel; every line carries a certain weight by the animal characters who say it and not as if the characters are speaking philosophically. Dialogue carries weight by way of enunciation and clarity, which makes every word land with a resounding thud, especially from Elba, who owns the role of an antagonistic tiger.
Bill Murray is about as genial and warm as you could ever want him, and even Scarlett Johansson gets a phenomenal monologue playing the aforementioned snake, her words landing with a slithering significance and leaving an aura with her venomous vernacular.
It’s sad to say, but the weak link here is newcomer Neel Sethi, who is essentially the sole actor operating in a land created of smoke and mirrors before a series of green screens and “placeholder” objects. Maybe it’s the anxiety of his debut film role, or the sheer weight of said film role, but for whatever reason, Sethi seems uncomfortable and ill-equipped to handle the more emotional side of the film effectively.
While that weak link is fairly strong, and admittedly offsets much of the film, it does not cripple it because of everything that’s going on throoughout.
Beautiful canvases and wide-open areas of the jungle appear like limitless playgrounds for the characters and Favreau works to make use of every corner and crevasse in the newly imagined land.
If any story needed to be re-imagined in a live-action playground at a time when technology can effectively create humanoids as well as it can create superhero destruction and Godzilla, “The Jungle Book” isn’t an unreasonable venture nor possibility.
