CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

clanciai Walt Disney was obsessed with Kipling's Jungle Book, it was his greatest dream to make his version of it, but he failed from the beginning, dying before having had the possibility to supervise the cartoon version of 1966, which in its failure to realize his visions did not live up to them. His work on Kipling was thereby left unfinished. As if they felt some duty of his legacy, his followers kept following up on Mowgli, and there were two more Disney Jungle Books to come, the first a full feature film with live men and animals, and the second concentrating entirely on the animal world. Both are great successes, although the first almost becomes anti-Kipling in its turning British soldiers into typical shallow Disney villains, you couldn't imagine anything less gentlemanly or Kiplingesque, and of course they are doomed from the beginning, like all Disney's demonizations, and the second is a remake, although better, of the 1967 cartoon but with astounding impersonation of the animals. This second version tells an entirely different story, departing demonstrably from Kipling, concentrating on the ankus incident and its problems of greed and human short-sightedness, but it's a wonderful film, and all the major characters are there. The monkey episode is given a new slant of delightful good humor, underscoring the main character of the film as delightful in its splendor all the way. None of the animals speak in this film but are the more expressive, especially Shere Klhan, who is only in for the killing but with a vengeance, turning him into the film's triumph. The Disney mark is here: any animal is better than any man.And that is as far as you can get from Kipling. None of the three Disney Jungle Books have lived up to an ounce of the Kipling poetry, which is the main blood of his Jungle Book, but nevertheless, the ingenious conclusion of this film, which couldn't be more Disney, is just as good a story as anything of Kipling's.The outstanding music score adds to its qualities, bringing it almost all the way to a full 10 points.

david-sarkies This is an interesting movie but I was rather misled when I came to hire it. I assumed that the original Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling had a lot of Christian anecdotes in it, though I have never read it. Upon seeing this movie I thought that it would be based closed to the book and with the suggestion of a couple of others, decided to show this film to a group of kids at an Easter Mission at Normanville. They said the movie was okay but as I watched it I was regretting that I actually chose this movie. I thought that it would have Christian anecdotes but it did not. I had a gut feeling that it did not follow the book and after reading Ebert's review I discovered that I was right. Basically, I should have shown three Vegetale videos instead.This movie seems to follow more of an Indiana Jones style movie than anything else. It contains lost treasure filled cities brimming with traps and an evil imperial empire seeking to find it and steal it for themselves. The place is the far reaches of India during the time of the British occupation and they are seeking to tame the wild land with their civilisation. This is the one theme of the movie that stands out and it is the taming of the wild. The jungle is wild and the British seek to tame it. The only problem is is that they cannot. The Black Jungle is the place which nobody enters because it is untameable.The story focuses on a boy named Mogli who is lost as a child during a tiger attack on a camp. He grows up in the jungle with a wolf, a bear, and a panther. These animals are his close friends but they seem to fall into the background when Mogli returns to civilisation. This is when the British decide to attempt to civilise him. At first they don't want to, they would rather beat him up until he shows them to the treasure, but later, when it is discovered that he was the child of somebody who saved the major's life, he is then released and they attempt to civilise him.I think it is bad to deceive an audience by the title of a movie, and I don't know how the ratings people hand out ratings, but I thought that this was not really a children's movie with the amount of blood, people sinking into quicksand and being buried alive in temple traps.

Neil Doyle Having missed this when first released, it was a pleasure to discover that this version of Kipling's THE JUNGLE BOOK has been photographed with stunning results in WideScreen color. It features an excellent cast headed by Jason Scott Lee, Lena Headey, Sam Neill and John Cleese, all giving admirable performances.Detailed scenic wonders of the jungle with dense foliage, rippling waterfalls, exotic plants and animals--and best of all, the majestic looking sets for the hidden city holding all the treasures, are what make the film worth watching. The famous story has its share of jungle thrills and these have been broadened to include even more conflict in the jealousy that evolves between Mowgli and a British officer who wants to marry the girl. His only interest in Mowgli is to have him lead him to the hidden city. As the boy who finds out that Civilization can be more dangerous than any jungle, Jason Scott Lee is the perfect embodiment of Mowgli, capturing the character's innocence and naive nature in a way that is always credible. Lena Headey makes a lovely heroine as the girl he knew as a youngster who befriends him again, against the opposition of her arrogant British officer fiancé Cary Elwes whose untimely end makes for one of the story's most exciting and satisfying scenes.Background music by Basil Pouledoris is highly effective and Stephen Sommers directs the whole piece in workmanlike fashion with only a few scenes a bit too intense for young children.Summing up: An adventurous tale well told in a gorgeously mounted production.

Electrified_Voltage 27 years after the release of the famous animated Disney feature, "The Jungle Book", a live action Disney movie with the same title came into theatres. Both films feature characters from Rudyard Kipling's book of the same name, which I have never read. I think it was on the last week of 1994, in between Christmas and New Year's, when I went to see this live action version in the theatre. I was eight years old, and can't remember exactly what I thought, but certainly don't recall finding it boring. Shortly after that, I remember seeing at least a bit of it again at school, but don't recall seeing any of it after that until last night, when I saw it for the first time in well over a decade. It looked mildly disappointing at first, but didn't stay that way.Set in Victorian-era India, five year old Mowgli goes on a hunting expedition with his father in the jungles of India and quickly befriends Katherine "Kitty" Brydon, the five year old daughter of English colonel Geoffrey Brydon. After a tiger named Shere Khan kills Mowgli's father, the little boy finds himself lost in the jungle, and is raised by animals. He grows up here, living like the jungle animals and learning how to communicate with them. One day, Kitty happens to be in the jungle again, and Mowgli sees her, which lures him back to the village where his childhood friend still lives with her father. Kitty and Dr. Julien Plumford begin to reintroduce him to human life and teach him English, and Mowgli shows Kitty what life is like in the jungle. While these two are nice to him, there are other British colonists who look down on him, including Kitty's arrogant suitor, Captain William Boone. Mowgli is also disgusted when he learns about human laws.Around the beginning, when Mowgli and Kitty are five years old, it gets pretty sappy between the two. The musical score is really overdone in some scenes, such as the one where Mowgli discovers Monkey City, and often gets too sappy in the romantic scenes. There are several groin-kicking scenes, which are unnecessary, especially for a family movie. Despite the severe flaws, however, there's more good than bad. Jason Scott Lee does a very nice job playing the likable lead, and the acting in general is good here, including memorable performances from Lena Headey as Kitty and John Cleese as Dr. Plumford. The humour in this film is never hilarious, but is sometimes at least mildly amusing, such as the part where Dr. Plumford says, "No. That's not a boat. That's Queen Victoria." I think casting a former Monty Python comedian (Cleese) in the movie helped. The adventure often gets exciting, very much so later on, and there are touching moments as well. One particularly heart-wrenching scene is Mowgli finding Baloo severely injured. This is a scene I clearly remember from my first viewing! Even though the 1967 and 1994 films have the same title and several of the same characters, and they are both from Disney, one being animated and the other live action is not the only major difference. The plot is a little different, and this film is significantly darker than the cartoon version. There are live action movies with talking animals (such as the hit 1995 family film, "Babe"), but this is not one of them. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but it is another notable difference between these two Disney flicks. However, despite being very different, both films are good. One of the reasons for the PG rating of this version is the violence, which occasionally includes some fairly gory scenes. I wouldn't recommend this film for kids much younger than I was during its theatrical run, but for older kids and others who like adventure movies, this COULD be entertaining. It's no masterpiece, but it is fairly underrated.