{"id":3496,"date":"2016-04-17T20:58:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T04:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=3496"},"modified":"2016-04-17T20:58:02","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T04:58:02","slug":"re-opening-jungle-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/re-opening-jungle-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Opening \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Declan Hertel\r\nEntertainment Editor<\/pre>\n
From the moment the first trailer for \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d dropped, I wanted it so freaking badly. I have no especially great love for the 1967 version, beyond enjoying it as a child, but this new take on it looked gorgeous and had a killer voice cast, and I\u2019d been super stoked for it since. So as the lights went down on a Friday afternoon screening, I found myself giddy, hoping that this movie would be as awesome as I had imagined it would.<\/p>\n
And you know what, it came pretty darn close. This is a solid flick.<\/p>\n
My favorite thing about this new version, directed by Jon Favreau (\u201cIron Man\u201d), is that it doesn\u2019t care that it\u2019s gorgeous. James Cameron\u2019s \u201cAvatar\u201d blew us all away in 2009 with its spectacular visuals, but honestly, it knew that\u2019s really the only thing it had going for it: it looked stupid good.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jungle Book,\u201d for my money, looks better. But it doesn\u2019t care. Painstaking effort was put into making it seem like this movie was shot by real people in real places with real cameras starring real animals. It\u2019s not out to show off, it\u2019s out to tell a good story, and just happens to feature visuals that would have been unthinkable five years ago.<\/p>\n
As for telling a good story, this is where the movie falls slightly (but just slightly) short. In this age where blockbuster films are\u2014seemingly as a rule\u2014two and a half fugging hours long, I feel weird saying this, but here goes: I wish \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d was longer.<\/p>\n
Coming in at a tidy one hour and 40 minutes, \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d certainly doesn\u2019t overstay its welcome, but it also leaves too soon. When I say I wish it was longer, I don\u2019t mean they should tack on another 20 minutes; I mean that I wanted another 30 seconds here, two minutes there, so that they could flesh out the great, great stuff they\u2019ve got. Not more content, but fuller content. All the makings are there for a wonderful epic: it\u2019s just not epic enough. I have fantasies of a director\u2019s cut, but I realize that\u2019s kind of a silly notion.<\/p>\n
Personally, the visuals are worth the price of admission; just because the film doesn\u2019t draw attention to them doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t attention-grabbing. The voice performances are invariably great and delightfully understated (particularly Christopher Walken as a big-ass ape), and newcomer Neel Sethi\u2014merely 10 years old\u2014does a truly admirable job of carrying the film. I would love to see him get more work and improve his already pretty notable abilities.<\/p>\n
I could say an awful lot more about the film, from the individual characters, to the perfect inclusion of \u201cBear Necessities,\u201d to the slightly weird inclusion of \u201cI Wanna Be Like You,\u201d to the multiple questions raised by basing a mass-market movie in 2016 on a work steeped in the attitudes of a deeply racist time (next week in editorials), but alas\u2014I\u2019m almost out of words. Suffice to say \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d is a solid, highly enjoyable flick.<\/p>\n
Contact the author at dhertel11@wou.edu or on Twitter @JournalFunTimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the moment the first trailer for \u201cThe Jungle Book\u201d dropped, I wanted it so freaking badly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}