Review of Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018) by Ajzeg01 — 21 Sep 2019

This movie was a well-made tech demo, but it leaves a lot to be desired as a movie. The story is really weird and all over the place. It feels way too fast paced and short in a lot of places, and I’m not sure exactly what this movie is trying to be.

It’s not a faithful adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, but it isn’t really doing its own thing either. It’s like a weird mix of the two. Also, the message of the film was really odd.

It had an anti-trophy hunting message or something like that, which is not what The Jungle Book is about at all as far as I know! However, what really makes this movie are the effects and the performances.

It’s important to note that this movie is directed by legendary performance-capture artist Andy Serkis, who you may know best as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. The human actors all do a great job, and the movie features some great performance-capture technology on the animal characters.

They are less realistic than the 2016 Disney version, but that allows the animal characters to be more expressive, which I think makes it look a lot better. As for which one is a better film, I’d say both Mowgli and the 2016 Jungle Book are about the same in my mind.

They are both special effects tech demos that leave a lot to be desired in the story area. Mowgli is worth checking out if you’re curious, it is a Netflix original so you got nothing to lose, but don’t expect the definitive film interpretation of The Jungle Book.