Review of The Jungle Book (2016) by Skullballcorp — 15 Apr 2016

I went in fully expected to hate everything about this movie. I really did, I think part of me even WANTED to hate it.

So after seeing the trailer before pretty much every film for the last 5 or so months and being annoyed at having to see it so much I was left unimpressed, the cg did not look great and I just did not care about the movie at all, also making Kaa a female now? that confused me.

However. I went to see the movie to form a valid opinion and was absolutely shocked and blown away. Firstly the trailer does not do the cgi justice it as absolutely breathtaking from the actual design to the mannerisms of the animals its just s believable. The only real tell that its not real animals is their mouth movements which are cleverly hidden for much of the movie.

The story is nothing special it tells the Kipling story decently well and minus a few characters being shown very little its all around very well done. Shere Khan is absolutely brilliant and menacing as they could possibly make him while keeping the age rating down. He is straight up bloodthirsty in this and the voice actor did a solid job, as did all the actors in this.

The tone is also great not straying too much into the serious side of things but not breaking out into song constantly either, they got it just right.

If I had to say anything negative, the actor playing Mowgli just wasn't that good in my opinion, he was decent enough but some of his reactions etc. were a little off to me and the kid cant sing, I don't know if they thought having him singing rather than dubbing another person would make it more believable or something but it really takes away from a potentially great scene.

Other than that the cast is great as I said and despite my rash judgement of the movie from the trailer and pre release stuff it turned out great. Far from a 10/10 film like some are claiming but a very worthy entry into the disney catalogue and a very solid reboot of a classic movie.