Old and New Movie Review - The Jungle Book (1967 and 2016)

It seems that Disney are wanting to do things yearly. 2 Marvel films, 1 Star Wars film, 1 animated classic, up to 2 Pixar films and in the case of today's post, at least 1 live action remake of one of their animated classics. This year, we get the Jungle Book. A film notable for being the last ever film Walt Disney did before his passing and has Disney and other film studios try to remake it time and time again with little to no success. But thanks to the success of some of Disney's more recent remakes, they began work on another live action Jungle Book, bringing in Iron Man director Jon Favreau for directing duties and bringing in an all star cast featuring a Ghostbuster, an Avenger, a deceased drug kingpin, Ghandi (by which I mean the actor who portrayed him in a film), Heimdall of Asgard, that old yellow smuggler from Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the great and funny Christopher Walken. So with that said, let's begin this post by first looking at the original 1967 film:


1967

So anyone who knows the story well, will know how both films play out. But for the rest of you, here's the story. The story of both films focuses on a "man cub" called Mowgli (voiced by Bruce Reitherman in this film) who is taken in by a black panther called Bagheera (voiced by Sebastian Cabot in this film) who decides to give him to a pack of wolves in the hopes to raise him which they do. 10 years pass and Mowgli is now older and has been well adjusted to jungle life. However, a tiger by the name of Shere Khan (voiced by George Sanders in this film) returns to the jungle and for the animals in the jungle, this means bad news. For his safety, Bagheera decides to bring Mowgli to the man village to protect the man cub from potentially being Shere Khan's dinner, meeting a wide array of characters along the way including a group of elephants, a care free bear, a hypnotising snake and a group of monkeys. Now looking back at this film, a lot of people feel that there's not much plot in it and in a way, I have to agree. I mean yeah there is some story in there, but that's not a bad thing. In fact most people remember this film like any Disney film, for its music. Before films like Frozen and the Lion King with their care free songs, the only care free song most people knew was Bare Necessities. Whats even more interesting and somewhat scary is that some or most of the cast voiced characters from Winnie the Pooh. Let that sink in for a bit. But anyway, whatever your opinions are or how you see this film, I think we can all agree that no matter how young or old you are, The Jungle Book will always have a place in our hearts. Its not perfect, but the songs are great. 8/10

2016

So coming back to the present and skipping other takes on the story either by Disney or some other studio (which like I said, while I haven't seen, I know they are not very good), we have this version of the film. The plot remains mostly the same as do the characters and some of the songs (some of which were reworked a bit), but I'd say this take is more of a serious take and features many elements from the source material more than the original film. For a start, even though this can be seen as CGI overkill because of Mowgli (played in this film by Neel Sethi) being the only real thing about this film, a lot of the CGI is very reminiscent of the actual book. The animals fit well with the actors who voice them and I liked how they were able to work in Bare Necessities and especially I Wanna Be Like You, the latter of which I thought was great and funny because of Christopher Walken and the way he talks. It is a great film and out of the two, this version is the best because there is actually a story, the music from the original film is worked in very well, despite CGI overkill it works well and its just an all around good film. And don't worry, its not all serious and does manage to capture the light heartiness of the original film. 9/10