The Jungle Book (2016) Review

     Good evening, everyone and welcome to another entry of Coffee With The Cynic's movie reviews!  Tonight we are taking a look at 2016's The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) and starring Neel Sethi.  Based on the book published in 1894, we follow Mowgli (Neel Sethi), a young boy raised by wolves in the jungle and mentored by a panther named Bagheera (voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley).  During a drought, a truce is called between all species of the jungle but the tyrannical tiger, Shere Kahn (Idris Elba), claims that having a "man-cub" is forbidden and vows to kill Mowgli once the rains return.  Mowgli decides to leave his wolf family for their safety and begins his trek to the a human village while bumping into creatures of all walks of life along the way.

     Am I familiar with this story?  Sort of.  Who hasn't seen the 1967 Disney classic?  However, it has been a really long time since I've seen that film (so much that I don't really remember much) so going into this new version of The Jungle Book felt like going into a fresh, original film and I wouldn't find myself being distracted by drawing comparisons to the 1967 animated movie.  How is it?  Pretty damned good.

     To say that this movie is visually incredible would be an understatement.  The film was shot in a Los Angeles studio on a blue-screen sound stage using a few rough puppets and actors in mo-cap suits to represent the various animal characters and give Neel Sethi something to act off of and I could count on one hand how many shots of this movie actually let that on.  The rest of the movie looked and felt like you were in the jungle with this young boy interacting with wolves, panthers, bears and the lot of them even though everything around him was brought to life with CGI (I swear, there are more than a few shots that I thought I was looking at real animals).

     Speaking of Neel's acting, this boy has one acting credit prior to this film and for the most part, he carried himself very well through this movie.  There were only one or two deliveries that made me cringe a bit but I don't think it was so much the actor but the dialogue as these lines didn't feel natural to hear a child say them but a child living in the jungle being raised by wolves isn't natural either so you could probably chalk this up as a nitpick.

     

When scenes like this hits you in the feels despite being a kid acting against pixels, you know you're doing something right.

     So Neel Sethi does well but what about the celebrity voice actors?  They also do well.  Again, for the most part.  My personal favorite was Bill Murray as Baloo because his wit and snark he brought to Baloo reminded me of the Bill Murray we've been missing for all these years (think less Lost In Translation and more 1984 Ghostbusters) and I found myself having a good laugh at a lot of his lines.  Idris Elba as Shere Kahn was a close second for me because the voice that Idris gives to this tiger made me absolutely terrified of him yet you couldn't look away whenever he was on screen.  Scarlett Johannson was fine as the python Kaa for the one cameo scene she was in and Christopher Walken as King Louie (who is interestingly a Gigangopithecus instead of a run-of-the-mill orangutan) was delightfully odd and being summoned via cowbell was a humorous nod.  The only one I found myself feeling ho-hum about was Sir Ben Kingsley as Bagheera as it felt like he just wasn't as into his role as everyone else was in the film.  It's not terrible but not up to par with the rest of the cast.

"He's an ugly little spud, isn't he?"

"I think he can hear you, Mowgli..."

     So is there anything outright bad about this movie?  Not much, really.  As mentioned before, there are couple of shots where it is a little more obvious that the movie was filmed with blue-screen and the odd slip-up from Neel Sethi or Sir Ben Kingsley's performances but the only other thing I can think of that stood out was the way the end credits played out featuring the same book that opened the 1967 classic flipping back and forth between pages while Walken's King Louie sings "I Wanna Be Like You" as it felt pretty out of place as far as tone goes but by this point, its the end credits so who cares, right?  Still felt more in place than the end credits to White Noise.

     Final Verdict: Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book is pretty damn good.  Is it Best of 2016 material?  My list-in-progress would tell you no but I would not fault anyone in the slightest for giving it that particular title.  The movie is absolutely breath-taking with the animation and jungle recreations, is entertaining with its characters and is quite thrilling with its climactic finale between Mowgli and Kahn.  Am I kicking myself for not seeing this one in theatres?  Yeah, a bit but hey, that's life.  Any negatives that I listed here are not crippling hindrances and I would suggest that you folks check it out if you haven't already now that it is on Blu-Ray.  The Jungle Book is most definitely Excellent.

 *guitar peel*

     So what did you think of 2016's The Jungle Book?  Is this your favorite version?  Let me know in the comments and as per usual, if you like what you see on this page, be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

     P.S. I am doing a Give Away on the YouTube channel with some Dinosaurs Attack merchandise up for grabs.  Click here for details!

Countdown To Godzilla: Pacific Rim Review

     Hey, everyone!  Here we are 79 days until May 16th when Gareth Edward's Godzilla hits the theaters with a vengeance.  Yesterday the internet was presented with a new trailer for the film (which helped us nerds ease the sadness of the loss of Ghostbusters writer/star Harold Ramis the day before) and so...what do you mean you haven't seen it?  Here, check it out below.  I'll wait.

     Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way and we've wiped the drool from our gaping mouths, upon seeing that I was thinking to myself, "Damn, I gotta get on that next review.  May'll be here before we know it!"  After the kids had gone off to bed, I parked my ass down and finally got around to watching Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim.

     Gypsy Danger vs Knifehead

     The plot of Pacific Rim is that giant creatures begin emerging from the Pacific Ocean called Kaiju (Japanese for 'Giant Beast').  The first creature takes six days to kill using conventional military weapons.  As more Kaiju show up, the world realizes that their tanks and jets aren't going to cut it, so the nations set aside their differences and pool their resources to make giant robots named Jaegers (German for 'Hunter') to combat this threat.  At first the Jaegers are a monumental success and the Kaiju almost becomes something of a joke to humanity, but then the Kaiju begin adapting to the Jaegers and humanity's future is put into question.

     To be honest, Pacific Rim was one of the big summer '13 releases where try as the trailers might, it just couldn't draw me in enough to buy a ticket  (the other was Man Of Steel).  Sure, I like giant monster movies and creature features in general but for whatever reason, Pacific Rim just wasn't doing it for me.  The film's theatrical run came and went and feedback from my friends varied from "Very articulate and well thought out" to "so horribly stupid that it's enjoyable, much like the Mario Brothers movie."  I still hummed and hawed about it once the film hit home release, but then I watched the Honest Trailer for it and decided, "Okay, let's give it a shot for Countdown To Godzilla."  Minor spoiler alert.

Heimdall and Jax in the same movie?  Man, the Kaiju are so screwed.

      Well, where to start?  Let's go with the actors.  At first, I groaned a little at Raleigh Becket's (Charlie Hunnam of Sons Of Anarchy fame) narration at the beginning of the movie, feeling that it lacked...enthusiasm, for the lack of better term.  I kept an open mind though because some actors work better on screen then they do with voice overs and, hey, the narration wasn't as bad as The Last Airbender.  It wasn't until Raleigh's backstory was told that I understood why he lacked enthusiasm (his brother got killed during the fight with Knifehead) and was more forgiving with that.  Hey, how upbeat would you be if your brother got killed while you were neurally connected?  The rest of the cast does a decent enough job with their roles, although I'd be lying if I said that the switches between English and Chinese during Mako Mori's (Rinko Kikuchi) lines were a tad distracting because the film never really gave a reason for it.  If it was established that Mako's English was limited, I'd shrug it off but I never got that impression.  As far as Idris Elba's role as Commander Pentecost goes, it's not like it was phoned in but I didn't find myself clenching my fists and thinking, "Fuck yeah," whenever he was onscreen, unlike when I watch the Thor films.  The cameos from del Toro alumni Ron Perlman as a Kaiju Organ Black Market dealer and Ellen McClain in her GLaDOS voice from the Portal game series were welcome additions.

Maquette for the Kaiju "Otachi."

      Okay, not surprisingly, this movie gives enough to its human cast so that the audience doesn't get up and leave during the slower scenes and tosses everything else at the special effects department, and I don't just mean the CGI.  Legacy Effects (formed by Stan Winston Studio almuni Lindsay Macgowen, Shane Mahan, Alan Scott and John Rosengrant) contributed the practical effects to the film, giving amazing detail to the Kaiju skin parasites and body parts in Dr. Newton Geiszler's (Charlie Day) lab, amongst others.  As far as the CGI goes, Industrial Light & Magic really outdid themselves on this film, making their efforts from the Transformers and Pirates Of The Caribbean films look cheap in comparison.  The first appearance of the Kaiju is an image that'll give you chills with how detailed everything looks as it rips apart the Golden Gate Bridge.  I don't think the rest of the Kaiju shots quite live up to that first one, but they all look quite remarkable.

*Shudders*

       Am I sorry I didn't catch this one in the theaters?  No, not really.  Pacific Rim doesn't really blow your mind with its storytelling but I don't think it wants to.  It wants you to be a kid again, enjoy giant robots feeding giant monsters knuckle sandwiches and depart from the dark, gritty Christopher Nolan-esque style blockbusters seem to be taking lately.  While some parts closer to the end of the film felt a little too Independence Day for my liking, overall Pacific Rim gets an "okay" from yours truly.  The film may run a little longer than it probably should but it is far from a waste of time.  That being said, I don't think I'm on board for that potential sequel that Guillermo del Toro has talked about (the ending doesn't really leave an opening for a sequel, but hey, neither did Independence Day and look how that's going).  If you dig CGI spectacle creature features, put this in your movie que.  If nothing else, it's a helluva lot better than Q: The Winged Serpent was.

     Check back in a little while for our next entry in Countdown To Godzilla, where we look at the one that started it all: 1954's Gojira.

-The Cynic