Jungle Book
As far as I can tell, there are really only two things that keep life from being perfect: underwear and other people. In The Jungle Book, young Mowgli is free from other people; he lives with animals in the jungle, so he’s halfway to perfection. But the damn kid still wears underwear, a sort of tighty-orangey thing.
Why? He’s supposed to be one of the animals, yet I didn’t see the movie’s elephants, wolves, bears, monkeys, pangolins and deer in underpants. I bet everyone around me in the theater was thinking exactly what I was because everybody fucking hates underwear. (I don’t have a reliable survey because I was only able to ask a few of the kids around me before some asshole parents reported me to theater staff.)
Underwear are prison for your genitals. My nuts are generally innocent, so I incarcerate them as little as necessary. Even when I do I leave the cell door open as often as possible. But if I lived in the trees with bears and monkeys, you bet my scrotum would be free to roam, tanned and chapped as a cheap Mexican wallet. I’d let my balls swing like Foucault’s Pendulum. Fuck owning a compass. Hell, I don’t even need a jungle, any open space a half-acre or larger and my panties are off. When you see me chasing ducks in Arvada’s Central Park, rest assured the waterfowl are getting a light show. With pubic hair instead of lasers.
It was probably Pauline Kael, but possibly me while drunk, who first said that no movie can be a masterpiece if you know the protagonist is wearing underwear. So, right off the bat we know The Jungle Book is no classic. This is not to say I want to see kiddie balls. I looked at my own plenty while growing up. But still, knowing how badly caged the protagonist’s balls yearn to soar like eagles is enough to distract even a sober movielover from paying attention to anything else happening on screen.
Despite all the fucking underwear, The Jungle Book is sort of good. Not as good as the 1967 animated Disney version, mind you, in which Mowgli still wore underwear, but was nonetheless looser and more fun. That one, though, didn’t bear the burden of being a blockbuster with all that entails.
The new Jungle Book is all spectacle, more action, more set pieces, and all the time trying like crazy to dazzle you. It sort of does, too. This version is live-action, supported by an entirely-CGIed forest full of deer, monkeys, tigers, leopards, pangolins, elephants, bears, bees, wolves, porcupines. None of which are wearing underwear. The danger is meant to feel real, the action is fast, and the scenery is deeper than a Utah well. Honestly, the CGI shit is the best part of this movie.
The story is mostly the same between the two Disney versions, with the biggest difference being the ending. No longer is Mowgli (Neel Sethi) drawn out of the wilderness by some cute young woman. Instead, the ending is muddled and leaves Mowgli in the jungle where he is readily available to appear in a sequel.
In both flicks, Mowgli is orphaned in the jungle and raised by wolves. A tiger named Shere Khan (Idris Elba) killed, and was maimed by, Mowgli’s father. Now he wants revenge. However, a panther (Ben Kingsley) and a bear (Bill Murray) try to save the boy and his orange panties by leading him to a village of humans where he will be safe, despite his desire to stay with the animals.
The movie that follows is episodic. Mowgli encounters various threats on his way to the man village, such as a python who wants to squeeze the shit out of him, and a capo-like ape who wants access to man’s fire so he can rule the jungle. The boy proves himself to be a compassionate jungle citizen, despite his ability to use tricks that only humans can.
While the best thing about The Jungle Book is how damn good it looks, the second best thing is that the kid playing Mowgli doesn’t totally suck. He probably had to do 99% of his acting against green screens and people covered with more white spots than a teenager with bad skin. But he’s tolerable, even if he doesn’t strike me as particularly interesting.
He’s not the only one, though. Personality, or lack thereof, is easily the worst thing here. Most of these anthropomorphized animals are there in service of the spectacle. Each characters says his bit to push the plot along, but even the comic relief characters are boilerplate and forgettable. The exceptions would be Bill Murray as Balloo the lazy bear, and Christopher Walken as King Louie, a capo di tutti ape. The problem I had was that in both cases, these characters are interesting because they’re lifted wholesale from the 1967 movie. They sing the same songs and make the same jokes, all of which were better coming from Phil Harris and Louis Prima, who were tailor-made for the roles. Or vice versa.
And that leaves the audience with a typical story-thin blockbuster, only with way better than average special effects, and marred by a god damn pair of underwear. If you’re going to spend this much money and this much human capital, why the fuck wouldn’t you make some effort to make the characters worth the scenery? And let the poor kid’s balls run wild. Three Fingers for The Jungle Book.