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The Jungle Book: Mini-review

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Bill Murray

Bill Murray isn’t bearish about The Jungle Book

BDirector Jon Favreau‘s The Jungle Book has two creative fathers: Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the stories on which the movie is based, and Walt Disney, who oversaw production of the 1967 animated version of the children’s classic. In blending these two disparate sources, Favreau and screenwriter Justin Marks opt for thrillingly realistic CGI animals with a touch of Disney’s gentle wit, a mix that’s generally, but not always effective.

The screenplay of the current Jungle Book is closer to the earlier Disney version (this movie was also produced by Disney) than to Kipling’s stories. A young boy, Mowgli (Neel Sethi), has been raised since infancy by wolves, with considerable guidance from the panther Bagheera (voiced by Ben Kingsley). But when Shere Khan (Idris Elba), a vengeful tiger, threatens to kill Mowgli, the boy goes off into the jungle by himself rather than risk the lives of his friends. Eventually, Mowgli returns to confront Shere Khan, hoping to use his human ingenuity and the one thing the tiger fears—fire—to defeat it. 

Disney’s earlier Jungle Book was the last of the studio’s classic hand drawn, brightly illustrated films, and the characters, even the villains, were mostly playful and cartoonish rather than dignified or threatening. Favreau’s film, on the other hand, looks startlingly real, as if it were filmed on location in the depths of the rain forest. In actuality, only Sethi and a couple of other bit actors are real, and everything was “filmed” in a Disney animation studio in Los Angeles. The animals are stunningly rendered and usually look, act, and move naturally. When they do act more like the old Disney characters, The Jungle Book suffers. The worst culprit is King Louie the orangutan (Christopher Walken), who, in this version, is a monstrous creature that towers above Mowgli.  Shere Khan is the best realized character, a surprisingly sympathetic and credible villain, eloquently voiced by Elba. While The Jungle Book‘s efforts at physical comedy are weak, the script gives Bill Murray, as the voice of Baloo the bear, some good one liners, and the film retains the two classic tunes from the earlier version, “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna Be Like You.” Jon Favreau doesn’t quite find the right mix of new technology and old Disney, but he has brought Rudyard Kipling’s stories to exciting, realistic, and at times dangerous life.
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Zootopia: Mini-review

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Ginnifer Goodwin

Ginnifer Goodwin does the Bunny Hop in Zootopia

B+Walt Disney Studios was seemingly built on the back of a cheerful yet plucky animated mouse named Mickey. Some 90 years later, Disney has another major success on its hands in Zootopia, courtesy of another animated herbivore, a bunny with the appropriate name of Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), and a seemingly inappropriate occupation as a police detective.

Actually, Judy’s occupation is the entire point of Zootopia, which is set in a world populated solely by anthropomorphic mammals of all shapes and sizes. Judy becomes the first rabbit member of a police force dominated by larger animals, but her boss, Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) makes her a meter maid. She eventually gets her big chance to investigate a missing person (or, in this instance, missing otter) case, and recruits a streetwise fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to help her.

While today’s better animated films work both as juvenile slapstick and inside humor aimed at adults, Zootopia goes even one step further. There’s plenty of visual humor in the movie, featuring a major city that’s been designed for use by creatures ranging from mice to elephants, and it’s a delight to see the architectural and stylistic contortions needed for this to happen. Further, the “missing otter” case winds up involving a massive conspiracy with noirish undertones that would, minus the animation, make a good adult thriller. Zootopia doesn’t neglect the in-jokes in this regard either, with takeoffs on The Godfather (with a bizarre Mr. Big) and Chinatown.  But Zootopia also uses its animal characters to make some very important human points aimed at both young and old, raising issues of stereotyping characters, in this case based on the species, not the individual. Judy fights the cuddly bunny stereotype, while Nick has become a con artist because that’s what everyone expects of a fox. Zootopia makes its points in a generally subtle, albeit inconsistent manner (it’s okay to make jokes about slow-moving sloths working at the DMV) that never gets in the way of the film’s lively visuals, clever humor, and a catchy song by Shakira (who fittingly plays a rock star named Gazelle in the movie). Zootopia lacks the emotional impact of the best Disney films, but it’s definitely one of the brighter spots in a so-far underwhelming 2016 in theaters.
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The Gunman: Mini-Review

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Sean Penn

You won’t see Sean Penn accepting an Oscar for The Gunman next year

CAt the age of 54, Sean Penn has apparently decided to follow in Liam Neeson‘s footsteps and become an aging, anguished action hero. Penn’s The Gunman is a film Neeson could easily have made, and it’s directed by Pierre Morel, who helmed Neeson’s first foray into this genre, Taken. It’s doubtful that Penn will fare as well as Neeson did, however, thanks in large part to a heavy-handed script.

Penn plays the title character in The Gunman, Jim Terrier, a former security contractor/covert op, While working in the Congo eight years earlier, Jim assassinated a government official on behalf of the mining concerns that hired his company. He has tried to make up for his past by working on humanitarian projects in the Congo, but now, he finds himself the target of a shadowy conspiracy determined to erase all record of the assassination plot. When Jim goes to Spain to get information from his former contact, Felix (Javier Bardem), he learns that Felix has married Jim’s old girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) and is working with the conspirators. Soon, Jim and Annie are reunited and on the run.

The Gunman could have been a solidly entertaining 90-minute thriller. Penn is in incredible shape (he appears shirtless on multiple occasions), and Morel stages the action scenes quite well. However, the script (which Penn co-wrote) is intent on hammering home its political points and dwelling on Jim’s need for atonement over and over. To make matters worse, Morel completely misuses Penn’s two most talented co-stars. Javier Bardem goes wildly overboard as Felix, although, to be fair, the character as written makes no sense whatsoever. Then, late in the movie, Idris Elba shows up as an Interpol agent whose only function is to tell Jim a ridiculous parable about building a treehouse. The result is a movie that gets sidetracked repeatedly when it should be building momentum. As an action film, The Gunman fires a few too many blanks to recommend.
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