The Jungle Book Review

"Forget about your worries and your strife...."


The Jungle Book is a remake or lets say re-modernisation of the classic Disney film, that I grew up watching as a child. This version of The Jungle Book was directed by Jon Favreau and has a highly talented cast for example Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson and Christopher Walken.

First of all lets start off by saying this film is visually stunning, the CGI is just beautiful to look at on the big screen and the level of detail is stunning especially on the animals themselves, all the animals look lifelike and believable and you start to forget that they are actual just CGI characters and you believe that they are real life animals (apart from the talking but hey this is Disney after all). The cast of the film is also amazing and every member of the cast gives fantastic performances especially Bill Murray's portrayal of Baloo, whos performance is up there with Phil Harris's original performance of Baloo, Baloo is defiantly one of the best characters in the film and has some of the most comedic and caring sequences in the whole film. I also want to praise Neel Sethi's performance of Mowgli, for a child actor to be acting on his own with locations and green screens is a tough challenge but Neel Sethi does an incredible job and is charming in the role of Mowgli. For those of you who loved the musical side of the original Jungle Book film you will not be disappointed, as some classic Jungle Book songs make an appearance in the film (even if they are slightly updated to fit the film) but I won't tell you which ones (nope not going to spoil it for you).

There was not much about the film that I did not enjoy, but a couple of things to mention is that in some of the areas of the film there is a much more adult mature darker tone to the film which for some people will be a nice change to the classic version of The Jungle Book but for me, sometimes having that tone detracting from the light-hearted "forget about your worries" approach (see what i did there!!) that was so successful about the original film. This was probably done to build up the fear factor or introducing Idris Elba's Shere Khan (which comes across intimidating). But the tone becomes much like the original when Baloo is introduced into the film which I enjoyed. I also thought some of the sequences ended a bit to soon for example a certain encounter with Kaa which personally for me ended abit to soon, and I would of liked it to of been extended slightly just so we could explore the character a little better as it seemed to be over really quickly.

Overall I really enjoyed the film, I thought the use of CGI was fantastic, a lot of films now a days rely on CGI and often over use CGI over practical effects, but im glad to say this film is an example of how to use CGI to enhance the world of the film and the audiences experience whilst watching the film. I defiantly enjoyed this version and take on The Jungle Book, do I think its better than the original? probably not but its still a very good version of the film. I highly recommend this film and it is definitely a film that families should go and see and I think this will become the next generations Jungle Book that children look up to and adore just as I did with the original Jungle Book.

Verdict: 4 out of 5 Stars