Review of Tarzan & Jane (2002) by John B — 07 Oct 2013

Tarzan & Jane never had a chance of living up to the success of its masterful predecessor, but if it wasn't so cheaply animated, insufficiently voice acted or half-assed in its storytelling then it could have been good.

These problems are all attributable to the fact that Tarzan & Jane is merely the product of 3 unaired episodes of the TV series The Legend of Tarzan, so rather than being a sequel it's more of a cheap attempt to capitalise on the success of the TV series for the benefit of the Disney Direct-to-DVD market. That's just aggravating for a fan of Tarzan to see succeeding the TV show attempt to pass off a compilation of the TV series as a movie, and it's frankly just not what Tarzan is about. Although I don't hold anything against the TV show because of how it continued the legacy of such a classic movie and was entertaining to me as a kid, when several episodes of it become marketed as a movie, that's just not appropriate and misleads fans.

It's not satisfying to the fact that it is supposedly a film, yet has a story which is too obviously a mere combination of episodes and really introduces nothing new to the characters or to the story of Tarzan, and so frankly is a waste of time to fans. Even the stories themselves have diluted messages and boring themes, as well as sub-par animation. Really, no creativity or originality was put into Tarzan and Jane, and the mild sense of colours and nostalgia towards the heroic character are the only mild benefits of this cheaply animated and poorly voice acted TV special marketed as a movie but featuring no real reason worth enjoying. The nostalgia just isn't enough, and this should have stayed as a TV special.