The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book (1967)

Next up is The Jungle Book, a spirited romp through the jungle with a cast of classically wild and crazy Disney characters. Released in 1967, this film definitely has the feel of its time – it’s dominated by jazz music and hip, “groovy” character types from the culture of the 60’s and late 50’s, this film definitely exists in a very clear time and place. That’s not to say the film is dated however, but is rather one of its strengths; by combining the seemingly polar opposite worlds of the swinging 60’s, with its revolutionary new cultural changes and rebellious attitudes and the Indian jungle of the 18^th century, an uptight and jingoistic age of British imperialism, the movie develops a very strange and interesting setting – one that, honestly, is probably as far away from Rudyard Kipling’s original stories as you could imagine. Along with an interesting cast of characters and a straightforward and direct storyline, The Jungle Book makes for not only an interesting piece of 60’s culture, but a very enjoyable film in its own right.

Once again, there’s not much new to say the animation, which continues to utilise the xerography method first seen in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Again, things have been cleaned up a bit and the lines are less rough and sketchy, but I’m not sure how much of a good thing that is; while the animation of One Hundred and One Dalmatianswas undoubtedly very rough, there was a charm and freshness to how different and almost primitive it looked, which fit well with the style of the film. In The Jungle Book, that novelty has worn off a little and some of the more traditionally rounded character designs of Mowgli and the little girl from the end of the film don’t suit this style as much as the heavily stylised and angular characters of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Still, there’s nothing else much wrong with it and there are some really nice character designs for the animal characters, who are very expressive and great at conveying emotion through facial expressions. The backgrounds are very nice, the jungle is certainly painted quite well and there is a lot of detail, adding greatly to the film’s atmosphere and effectively establishing a solid setting; if anything, the backgrounds are perhaps a little too detailed for the more comparatively simplistic and rough animation style – the two don’t gel together as well as in One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which had equally stylised and simplistic backgrounds, rather than these traditionally painted ones you might see in Fantasia. Still, it seems silly to complain about the backgrounds being too nice and they definitely stay as the background, never becoming too distracting, they always serve their inherent purpose of being an environment for the characters to explore and that’s it. The animation continues to only make baby steps forward, but it still manages to capture a lot of fun and energy and be fun enough to watch.

Kaa creepin’

The story is clear, if a little thin; again, it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the original stories, even less so than usual from Disney – infamously, Walt Disney gave the head writer a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s original The Jungle Book novel and immediately told him ‘The first thing I want you to do is not to read it’ and that definitely shows, but it’s not a bad thing, as Disney manages to take the basic idea of Kipling’s world and cast and put their own, fun spin on things, as they so often do. The storyline isn’t exactly strong, nor does it really build from scene to scene; like Alice in Wonderland, it’s more about the setting than it is about any specific plot and it uses its setting to jump from scene to scene of Mowgli interacting with a different, eccentric animal character and though certainly a lot more subdued than Alice in Wonderland, the film definitely reflects that basic structure. Still, like Alice’s quest to find the white rabbit, the movie has a clear aim from day one: Bagheera wants to get Mowgli to the man village, while Mowgli wants to stay in the jungle and they must avoid Shere Khan along the way; while this is brushed aside at times to accommodate the different animal’s antics, it is never really forgotten, unlike Alice’s search for the white rabbit and remains the driving force for the movie all throughout. The plot isn’t complex or well developed and certainly takes a back seat to the characters and various set pieces, but it’s at least well defined and always present, if a little underplayed. Most of the set pieces are really fun too, one of the best being the escape from the ancient ruins – Mowgli is thrown back and forth between Baloo, Bagheera, King Louie and his monkeys, as the ruins slowly crumble around them; things are constantly jumping all over the place, making for a crazy, action-packed and exciting chase. This is just one of the great scenes from the film.

Like The Sword in the Stone before it, The Jungle Book is really well paced; it gets started very fast and then moves the plot along quickly, without ever rushing or omitting important details. The film really does a lot in a small amount of time, by the time Mowgli has been kidnapped by the monkeys Baloo and him have only known each other for about ten minutes, yet Baloo is already furious at the monkeys and desperate to get Mowgli back and we totally believe it. In just a couple of scenes, Disney build such a strong relationship between the two that we feel like they have known each other for way longer, nothing about Baloo’s feelings for Mowgli comes off as phony or unearned, even though the two have barely spent any time together at all; Disney really packed as much as they could into every minute of the film, without making it seem bloated or messy. Things do slow down a little in the middle and the film could probably stand to be about ten minutes shorter, but it makes sense considering where the story is at that point and things do pick up again quickly and lead into an exciting climax, so this brief lull can be forgiven. As well as a sense of time, the film does a great job of creating a sense of place and a very strong and realised world in, again, such a short amount of time. You really feel like this jungle is a real, living, breathing place with its own sense of history; you get a good idea of how its society functions, how all the animals know one another, what their relationships are and what their history with one another is. All this is achieved so effectively just through the use of a few lines and brief touches in the characters’ interactions – the animal characters could all be meeting for the first time and the film would be pretty much the same, but by adding this subtle, downplayed sense of familiarity between them, it really helps legitimatise the idea that this jungle is a real place that existed before Mowgli and the audience entered it and this adds so much to the setting and atmosphere of the film. I left the film so enamoured with the world of the jungle that I honestly wanted to see more of it, I wanted know more about the animals’ pasts and how they first came to know each other... but then I remembered the short lived Disney channel show Jungle Cubs and decided maybe that some things are best left unknown.

Why is Shere Khan their friend it makes NO SENSE

The film employs a colourful cast of characters that includes arguably some of the most memorable and beloved in the entire Disney canon; understandable, as most them are great fun to watch, though some are admittedly a little weak. Mowgli is probably the weakest, as the protagonist of Disney movies so often are, as he’s mostly just a wide-eyed innocent who exists as an audience surrogate that pays witness to all the wacky animal hijinks, he doesn’t do much himself. To be fair, Mowgli is at least not a pushover like so many of his predecessors, he stands up for himself, he wants what he wants and does his best to get it and at times he can be very bold and firm, even to the point of arrogance; however, he can’t really back this up, being rather weak and ineffectual and in constant need of rescue - in the aforementioned chase through the ancient ruins, he is literally just passed from character to character and does nothing to help his own situation, he is pretty much just a prop - but at least he has the right attitude. Colonel Hathi is a bit of a bore, he’s a very generic character type of the stuffy old man who thinks he’s in the army, takes his self-appointed leadership role too seriously and isn’t really very good at what he does; he’s pretty identical to the similarly named Colonel from One Hundred and One Dalmatians and isn’t that fun, but he’s not in the film much so it’s not too bad. Then there are the vultures which are supposed to be the Beatles...? I dunno, one has the mop top haircut and sounds like someone doing a Ringo impression, but the others don’t really seem like the Beatles at all, I don’t really get it; they’re okay, I guess.

The other characters are mostly good though, Kaa is laughably pathetic and ineffectual and delivers some good physical comedy, King Louie is wild, eccentric and great fun, Bagheera is good in his constant attempts to be responsible and give good advice to Mowgli, only to be defied and then almost immediately proven right. Best of all is Baloo, he’s cool, fun, relaxed and delivers some of the best lines of the movie, such as his protestation against bringing Mowgli to the man village: ‘They’ll ruin him! They’ll make a man out of him!’ Baloo and Bagheera have a great dynamic acting as Mowgli’s two father figures and playing off one another, from the more serious, irritable and long-suffering Bagheera, who seems to get all the bad luck, to the more fun-loving, irresponsible and mellow Baloo, who seems to glide through life and get by with few troubles. They make a really good, classic double-act that unfortunately can get a little pushed aside at times for the other animal characters, which is a shame because their relationship is so strong that it really should be at the centre of the movie.

Then of course, there’s the villain, Shere Khan, one of the best parts of the movie; though only appearing in the last third, Shere Khan’s presence is felt all through the first hour of the movie and when he finally makes his appearance he proceeds to totally steal the show. He has such a fantastic personality, from his lazy, disinterested design, to the slow and deliberate movements in his animation and the way he talks – he is almost Shakespearean in his cadence, always speaking slowly and carefully, politely, but with a layer of threat, he is in complete control of every scene he’s in. While generally polite and reasonable, when this calm geniality is offset with his ruthless pragmatism, it makes Shere Khan seem genuinely threatening and dangerous, rather than just silly like Captain Hook or laughably evil like Maleficent or the Evil Queen. Shere Khan is very fun to watch, but he’s not a joke, he’s also a legitimately dangerous villain with a goal that is not ridiculously petty or cartoonishly evil, but frighteningly cruel and realistic – he’s not a monster and is mostly pretty easygoing, but he’ll remove anything that’s a threat to him, even a child.

‘Look on my works ye Mighty and despair’ – King Louie

Though the film has a strong setting and a good cast of characters, it is the music which is really at the heart of the picture; the songs of The Jungle Book are almost all good and, along with the musical score, they solidify the atmosphere the film is trying to create and bring the whole thing together. The background music is always fantastic, the overture and main theme of the movie is a beautiful, mysterious piece that effortlessly captures the dark beauty, mystery and danger of the jungle; the sounds of the bass flute (I believe that’s what it is, but perhaps it’s a different woodwind instrument) in particular evoke a sense of exoticism that fits India and its environment so perfectly, it’s almost like an audible representation of a snake, slowly slithering through the jungle under moonlight. It really is just a wonderful, wonderful piece of music from composer George Bruns. Then there’s the songs, though they’re not all fantastic, even some of the weaker ones like the chirpy “Colonel Hathi’s March” or rather slow “Trust in Me” are still very good and the other few are really top notch. The music to “My Own Home” is heard throughout the film whenever the characters discuss the fact that Mowgli is, no matter how long he’s spent in the jungle, still a human, foreshadowing the importance the song will have in his discovery and acceptance of this fact he has resisted for so long; when the song finally plays in full, it has so much more impact. The song itself is, like the main theme, haunting and mysterious, with a dark sense of beauty; it’s like a siren song that slowly draws the listener in, perfectly capturing Mowgli’s feelings – his sense of curiosity, the mystery of the young girl and the unexplainable pull she has on him which finally brings him to accept his role as a man.

To speak on a less pretentious level, “I Wan’na Be Like You” is just an awesome jazz song; high energy, upbeat, insanely catchy and while a little lacking in lyrics – most of it is just Louie and Baloo scatting – the few that are in there are mostly really good, the powerful imagery of fire as ‘man’s red flower’ in particular, stands out. Though a little slower, but just as catchy, “The Bare Necessities” is another hit which, for quite possibly the first time since “When I See an Elephant Fly”, shows that wonderful Disney wit and playfulness in its lyricism which will be perfected over the next twenty or so years. From the basic, but joyful pun of the title to the fast paced, tongue-twister verse which jumps between ‘paw’, ‘raw’, ‘claw’ and ‘pawpaw’, you can really tell how much fun they were having with this one and the audience surely is too; how can you dislike a song which rhymes ‘necessities’ with ‘rest at ease’ IT’S JUST SO GOOD. On a side note, The Lion King really owes quite a lot to The Jungle Book, the way young Simba draws from Mowgli, Zazu from Bagheera, Timon and Puumba from Baloo, the hyenas from King Louie and the other monkeys, Scar from Shere Khan and most notably, “Hakuna Matata” from “Bare Necessities”; in fact, there’s a whole part of “Bare Necessities” (a song about being carefree, easygoing and taking whatever comes your way in life GEE SOUNDS FAMILIAR) where Baloo teaches Mowgli about eating bugs by lifting up a rock and showing him the bugs underneath GEE SOUNDS FAMILIAR. Not to say The Lion King is lazy or bad, far from it and we’ll get to that when we get to it, but it’s weird to see how often it’s praised and called one of the best and many people’s favourite, when people so rarely seem to acknowledge how heavily it drew from The Jungle Book, but whatever. Either way, the music in this film is really good.

Junglebait

The Jungle Book is a great time, it’s hip, it’s fun and it always keeps you entertained; the world of the jungle is so well realised through the interactions of the characters and the atmospheric effect of the music that it really feels like a real place – more importantly, it feels like a real place that I’d want to go to and that really says a lot for this movie’s charm. The characters range from a little boring to a lot of fun, the villain is dripping with style and charisma and is incredibly enjoyable to watch and the songs practically explode off the screen with their energetic choreography and upbeat rhythm. Unfortunately, while a few weaker characters might not usually be a big problem, they do become a bit of a wrench in the works for this very character based film and, while the pacing is always good, their scenes can slow things down a bit. The plot is also a little too thin, though the film doesn’t suffer from a lack of direction, it doesn’t exactly develop the story into much else and uses it more as an excuse for tangentially related side-stories, though they’re mostly entertaining ones, so it’s not much of a problem. Artistically, the animation is at times very good and the backgrounds are nice, but the general artistry of the film is a little lacking; it’s definitely not bad, but from Disney I expect a little more. Still, these problems certainly don’t stop The Jungle Book from being a really good film and a clear source of inspiration for things to come; sadly, this was the last film in the animated canon that Walt Disney himself worked on, but all things considered, it’s a pretty damn good one to go out on.

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