Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'The Jungle Book'

So, Disney is hitting it out of the park lately, am I right? I was as skeptical as anyone else about all the live-action remakes (and no power on this earth could compel me to see another freaking re-interpretation of Cinderella), but we all know how Disney is: when they get it right, they kill it. I'd nominate The Jungle Book for the 2017 Oscars, but there's just one problem: I don't even know what category I'd put it in.

The thing about the "live-action" Jungle Book is that it is not, strictly speaking, live-action. It's not even motion-capture like A Christmas Carol. It's got the green-screen sets of Star Wars, but none of the live actors--none of the grown-ups, at least. The film is comprised entirely of loose props, CGI jungle, and CGI animals voiced by (and occasionally, visually referenced to) A-list actors. The movie is held together, at its core, by the performance of one eleven-year-old making his acting debut. Think about that for a second. Maybe what Avatar, the biggest movie that no one remembers, really needed was a little, big-eyed kid at the center of the eye-popping graphics to give it some real gravity.

Or maybe not. On second thought, maybe a kid wouldn't have fixed Avatar. But I maintain what I said when Ian and I left the theater: The Jungle Book actually does what Avatar tried to do. It's immersive. It's special. It's different. And most importantly, it has what other CGI-fests often overlook (yes, I'm looking at you, Harcore Henry): humanity. Which is, quite frankly, an odd compliment to give to a movie that's 99% computer-generated animals, but that doesn't make it any less true.

We all know the story. Kid gets lost in jungle, panther takes kid to wolf pack, kid grows up and by sheer virtue of his existence manages to piss off a tiger who hates humans, kid has to leave the jungle and, as would we all, he resists the idea of leaving the only home he's ever known. As a child I was in love with the original Jungle Book, as were a fair number of my friends. We all could identify with Mowgli in some way. Maybe, like me, we were reluctant to move when our parents sold the house. Maybe we preferred the company of animals to humans. Maybe we just plain loved being outside. Doesn't matter, the point is that we were all rooting for the kid.

Which brings me to the first major change in Jon Favreau's reworking. In the original Jungle Book, Mowgli is one of the most reactive protagonists I've ever seen. Think about it, does he ever really make any major decision on his own? The inciting incident is Bagheera telling him he has to leave the jungle. Then it's one string of rescues after another, culminating in a chance meeting with a pretty girl--hell, you know what, we might as well call it what it is: Mowgli, in the original 1960s animated film, is a freaking Disney princess. Even his big hero moment, tying fire to Shere Kahn's tail, comes at the suggestion of someone else. The vultures tell him to use the fire, he doesn't think of it on his own. It's brave, yes, but brave in a bratty ten-year-old, I'm-not-afraid-of-you-because-I-don't-know-any-better kind of way.

But in the new one, the kid isn't reactive, he's proactive. In the original Disney film, Bagheera has to literally drag the kid kicking and screaming from his home with the wolf pack. In Favreau's remake, Mowgli volunteers to leave to protect his wolf family. And this is just the first in a series of decisions that Mowgli makes to propel the plot forward. Almost all the events that just happen to him in the first film are direct results of decisions that he makes in this one. Even the fight with Shere Kahn, which in the original movie just sort of happens, is initiated by Mowgli rather than coming from a chance meeting. In the day and age of private pre-schools and heavy parental supervision, it's exactly the kind of thing kids need to see: a child standing up for himself and making his own decisions. It's empowering, and it is--to use the Disney word--absolutely magical.

Even the ending has changed to reflect Mowgli's true independence. What's so striking about that is that this new ending happens even while the film hammers home a point revolving around the true importance of family. Rarely have I ever seen a film that stresses independence and family at the same time, let alone a children's film with the same message--Matilda comes to mind, but few others. That Favreau managed to accomplish this is, in my opinion, frankly amazing.

I can't get into the parts that I truly loved without spoiling the whole thing. But without giving too much away, Christopher Walken makes exactly the perfect King Louie that we all knew he would, Scarlett Johansson can sing (if you are a Disney music fan and haven't downloaded "Trust in Me" yet, do it NOW), and if you loved Bill Murray before, you will even more now. And at the very center of it all is an 11-year-old kid, acting opposite puppets. There was no real set to speak of either; it all happened on a soundstage, with only the necessary props on-set--as in, the things Mowgli would have to physically interact with--and a ton of special effects filling in the gaps. But it's so easy to forget that during the entire process, Neel Sethi never interacted face-to-face with Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, or Ben Kingsley because no matter what he's doing, whether it's facing down a tiger or sharing an emotional farewell with his wolf mother, the kid sells it. Interacting with something that isn't there is difficult even for a seasoned actor (see: the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy), but for a first-time child actor to pull it off? Incredible.

My one complaint with the film is that some of the character introductions feel just a little...rushed. This is a minor quibble, but it does happen twice: first, when Kaa is introduced. The whole scene is so beautifully done--and if you see it in surround sound, which I did, it actually sounds and feels like she's in the theater with you, which is terrifying and amazing at the same time--but it's the first and last time we see the snake in the whole film. In the original Jungle Book we at least get a sense, roughly, of who Kaa is as a character: selfish, snarky, and not quite savvy enough to actually get himself a meal. In the new one it's more like "oh hi, don't mind me, I'm dropping in for some exposition because we know I'm not really going to eat this kid lolz BYE." It shortchanges what could've been a really good character, and I say that because in Disney's first crack at The Jungle Book, Kaa was simultaneously great comic relief and a fairly threatening secondary antagonist.

And I wouldn't complain, except they do it in literally the very next sequence with Baloo. We go from "ok, I saved your life, you owe me" to "hey, we're bestest friends now!" Granted, it's a little more character development than in the original, wherein Baloo shows up, sings a song, and promptly becomes Mowgli's new father. But there's an emotional payoff later that would have felt more earned had their friendship not developed so instantly and unbelievably. With that being said, the movie quickly rights this mistake by having Baloo make a killer entrance in the scene with King Louie. If we doubt his attachment to the man-cub before, after that scene it's painfully clear how much Baloo's new pet human really means to him. So yes, these complaints are minor, and while the story may feel rushed at times, Favreau quickly makes up for these lapses with a one-two punch of emotional payoff--and, when the situation demands it, a cute wolf pup or two to remind us that Mowgli isn't the only innocent who needs protecting in this jungle.

I mentioned that it's easy to forget that the actors never really interacted, but you know what? It's even easier to forget that none of what you're seeing is there at all. I kept forgetting during the course of the film that no, these aren't real elephants or panthers or wolf pups. There are no real animals in the film at all. And of course it's just as well that there aren't, because if that wasn't the case I would really love to know where they found a snake the length and width of a McDonald's playplace tunnel (so I could never ever go there in my entire life), but it's a mark of how far CGI has come since 2009's Avatar, when James Cameron tried and failed to make a world so immersive that we forgot we weren't really on the Forbidden Planet (Pandora...good God, man, I could've come up with better names than that, and I was a freakin' sophomore in high school at the time). The Jungle Book succeeds where Avatar fails, precisely because in this case, the filmmakers aren't trying to create a whole new world. They're just trying to tell a story. And the way they tell that story is nothing short of absolutely beautiful.

What happens in film school...goes on the internet

It's been too long! Well, that's what happens when you start a new job, I guess. ANYWAY! A Jungle Book review is forthcoming, but first, a word from our sponsors...

A little background: when I was still in college, I had a lovely teacher who, for the purposes of this post, shall go by Professor Smartass because, well, that's exactly what he was. He looked like Sherlock Holmes and dressed like Don Draper, but oh good God the pure gold that came out of that man's mouth...I'm not kidding, we actually had a swear tally for him because he dropped f-bombs like they were going out of style.

So it didn't take me very long to decide to record his finer quotations and squirrel them away in my film theory notes for safekeeping. I don't know if I can use any of this in a movie script later, which is technically the purpose of stolen dialogue (a thing I picked up from another of my teachers, this one in actual film school), but it's still pure gold and that's all that matters. Here are some of Professor Smartass's best moments. (And yes, there is cursing in this post. Not very professional, I know...but neither is saying "f that" in the classroom. You'll see.)


"The quizzes were okay...the lowest grade was a 60, the highest was a 100. There was some decent bullshitting going on!"

"If I was sitting here and the wall started talking I would not think, 'Oh, that's probably a voiceover!'"

"You have a research plan due for a research paper, the prompt for which you have not yet received...that's fucked up!"

(On Easy Rider)
"They can't really do worse than Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra...so why not just give Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper $500,000 and a ton of cocaine and see what happens?"

(On Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
"The film is trying to ease us into this shitshow!"

"Have any of us gone to a store where we could ask them to erase our memories? I don't mean, like, a coffee house in Amsterdam, I mean they put, y'know, that giant metal sieve, or whatever they put on his head in that movie..."

"The Warsaw Pact caused countries to break away from Communism, because who the fuck wants to be a buffer?"

"It will ROCK YOUR DONKEY."

"In the mid-sixties--I almost said the mid-SEXties, in the MID-SEXTIES..."

(on Italian neorealism)
Student: The audience found L'Aventura boring as heck.
Professor: "Boring as heck"...I think that's the nicest way it's ever been put.

(on sexist advertising)
"All these women, scantily clad, are not only holding these giant phallic bananas, but at some point they actually dunk them into a vaginal fruit cup."

"Now, the problem is that most people don't know what the fuck they're talking about."

Professor: The 3rd cinema...third world? What were the other two?
Student: First and second!
Professor: And we have a winner for "Jackass Answer of the Year!"

(on Soviet Montage)
"Is there any other way to interpret that? No! Eisenstein doesn't give a shit! He's kino-fisting you in the face!"

"Life sucks...I dig it!"

(on Citizen Kane)
"They gave Orson Welles a rare offer: make whatever film you want, and we will not fuck with you."

(on a movie mob boss)
"He has all these suits, he steals Michelle Pfeiffer from his boss, he has a pet tiger at one point...so yeah, things are pretty fuckin' good for him, right?"

"She's involved in , you know, drugs, crime, guns, maybe some casual terrorism..."

"It's totally arbitrary, calling this concept 'Objectif'...it could have been named, 'pile of bullshit,' who knows?"

Professor: What are you doing, Kelsey?
Kelsey: Um. I'm playing with play-doh. (holds it up so he can see)
Professor: Oh, that's fine. I thought you were texting. Go ahead.

"Now, Krackauer's not fucking around!"

(on the variety of art today)
"So, we have Mozart, and then we have Paulie D."

"Unfortunately, that did not play out, and so we still have to watch Justin Bieber on television."

(on Hitchcock)
"He has experience with the shit hitting the fan."

"Hitchcock was a genius at this, he forced people to identify with these crazy-ass bastards!"

(On Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo)
"This dude is batshit crazy!"

(on the new wave)
"It was basically a total shitstorm for 20 years--and it was AWESOME."

"You get to walk out of the theater after the movie ends, go back to your job and go, 'whoa, hey, I didn't kill someone today!'"

(on German expressionism)
"So what, are we supposed to think 'Wow, they have really weird windows in Germany?'"

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari--I don't know if you've seen it, but it's about this sleepwalking crazy dude that kidnaps women."

(on class discussion)
"Shit might get a little dicey."

"To use the technical term, this is a janky-looking website."

"And I didn't know what to do, so I drew a picture of a hippopotamus and a truck."

...and now I'm homesick for college. Excuse me while I go e-mail my teachers and tell them all how much I miss them. :)