“The Jungle Book” is a serious achievement of filmmaking, an infinitely enjoyable, immersive live-action/CGI adaptation of a classic book (and animated movie) set in a lush jungle that was filmed entirely in downtown Los Angeles.
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The story begins with young Mowgli (Neel Sethi) running through the jungle with his adopted wolf brothers. This “man cub” has been raised by wolves, which are apparently a lot like ’70s Berkeley types when it comes to parenting: brimming with questions and quips, Mowgli is a precocious hippie child in red underpants. He explained bringing Sethi with him to meet up with some the actors in different locations for line readings.The Jungle Book has emerged as a huge hit at the box office. This reimagining is based upon the collective works of author Rudyard Kipling and also the 1967 animated film of the same name.
Initial projections for “Jungle Book” ranged wildly from $65 million to $87 million.
Jon Favreau has had a wild and varied career, directing projects as disparate as indie treasures Swingers and Chef, to big-budget comic-book movies like Iron Man, to broad-appealing family adventures like Zathura. But Mowgli finds he is no longer welcome in the jungle when fearsome tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba), who bears the scars of Man, promises to eliminate what he sees as a threat. Instead, Mowgli’s friend the panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) tells Mowgli to flee to a nearby village.
Now that I’ve summed up the movie without spoilers, here’s one: It’s a fantastic film. Bagheera attempts to escort Mowgli to the closest human settlement, but they are attacked on their journey by Shere Khan, which causes Mowgli to get lost and forces him on his own journey of self-discovery, where he runs into various creatures – some risky, some friendly. But “The Jungle Book” stands above as his greatest achievement to date.
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If studios are going to insist on making remakes of classic films, let’s hope they all put in the care that Favreau and his team did with “The Jungle Book”. The film is realistic, however, in that “the animals are savage” so “little kids might be shaken up”.
