Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I know that’s not the real title. But it made me laugh, so it made the headline.
I can’t figure out who wants to see this film. Blabbermouse sat through it, though, so he’s going to fill us in on what to expect.
Hey Harry,
Blabbermouse here again. It’s been a while, so I thought I’d tell you about my trip this morning to a screening of Disney’s latest straight-to-theaters-before-it-hits-home-video release, ‘The Jungle Book 2: The Wrath of Khan.’ (I made that last part up myself.)
I went into the theater ready to hate the film, so I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to find JB2 relatively painless and sit-throughable. Like every other animated Disney ‘II’ (or ‘2’), this one makes sure to hit all the emotional marks & setpieces of the original, but varying & shuffling the deck just enough to make it feel like a new experience. Just to warn you, there’re more than a few spoilers ahead...
The film begins with Mowgli performing & narrating a shadow-puppet retelling of his adventures from the first film, a nice way of acknowledging (& getting out of the way for the young’uns who never saw it) the original’s backstory. Thanks to the modern miracle of CGI, the shadow puppetry actually looks like actual shadow puppetry. Maybe it’s just me, but the sequence (& its borrowing of third world storytelling – do they even have shadow puppets in India?) struck me as a nod to Julie Taymor’s ‘Lion King’ stage adaptation.
Haley Joel Osment replaces Woolie Reitherman’s son (who must be pushing 40 by now) as Mowgli. He’s not even close to the original, but from the way Mowgli’s drawn, it’s easy to imagine him as 2-3 years older than in the first movie – so maybe his voice is starting change. The girl who lured Mowgli into the ‘man-village’ in the first movie now has a name – Shanti – along with a mischievous kid brother Ranjan. The film makes clear that even though he’s been adopted by Shanti’s family (or has he? He seems to live in a storage shed), Mowgli doesn’t quite feel accepted, referring to her father (the ever-dependable John Rhys-Davies – do you need 3 names to do voice work for Disney?) as ‘sir.’
Right off the bat though, Mowgli is way more ‘pro-active’ (to use a current buzzword) than he was in the first film. (One of my problems with JB1 was that Mowgli was little more than a spectator to a series of vaudeville sketches performed by the various animals he meets along the way.) He performs the movie’s first song ‘Jungle Rhythm,” about how cool all the jungle critters are, inspiring the village kids to put on pretend manes, tails, whiskers etc. as they dance along with him. (Reminded me of a furry convention, which was fine with me since I go to a lot of them.) The point of the song: a big part of Mowgli misses the carefree jungle days of his youth.
Which brings us to the new Baloo, now voiced by good ol’ John Goodman. (I can’t believe I used to read articles about how this guy was a serious, classical actor who just happened to be slumming in the ‘Roseanne’ sitcom. This was before he started doing shlock like ‘The Flintstones’ & voices in every other cartoon that came down the pike.) He didn’t sound like he was trying to do a Phil Harris imitation (Goodman’s voice is way less bassy) as much as picking up the bear’s easy-going attitude. He arrives performing the first of the movie’s THREE reprises of ‘The Bare Necessities,’ performing it to a Mowgli mannequin he’s constructed out of a coconut & palm leaves. (Reminded me of Homer building a substitute Marge to live with him when he was exiled to the backyard treehouse.) It doesn’t do the trick of course, & Baloo decides to head for the village to retrieve his li’l buddy. Seems he’s been attempting this for a while, as the ever-conscientious Bagheera nags him with “you can’t keep trying to get Mowgli back.” (Bagheera’s voiced by Bob Joles; he’s in Sebastian Cabot’s ballpark, but somewhere out in left field...)
It wouldn’t be a Disney animated sequel without the recycling, so of course the elephantine Dawn Patrol returns, marching song & all, enlisted by Bagheera to help keep Baloo away from the village. (He eludes them of course, or it would have been a very short movie.) Funny how even though Mowgli seemed older, their kid looked (& sounded) exactly the same as before. The Beatle-oid vulture quartet is back too, joined by an even goonier, cockney-er bird called Lucky, voiced by Phil Collins. (Is this his 1st cartoon voice? Guess doing those Tarzan songs pulled him into the Disney orbit for good.) Lucky’s job is to rag on Shere Khan (Tony Jay of course, who’s been doing his George Sanders impression since ‘Reboot’ and Disney’s ‘Hunchback’) – I liked Lucky’s line that Khan’s ‘tiger tush has been burned’ by a mere man-cub. Lucky appears to fatally push his luck ragging on Khan, but they cop out on what would’ve been a well-deserved death & bring him back at film’s end.
Khan invades the man-village in search of Mowgli – the same time that Baloo is there for the same reason. Get ready for a ‘gimme’ moment: Shanti thinks the ‘wild animal’ the village is in an uproar over is Baloo and not Khan, who is chased off by a torch-bearing mob, without Shanti evidently hearing Khan’s roars or the villagers singing ‘Hold that Tiger’ as they chase him. (I made that part up too – too many Fleischer cartoons as a kid, you know.) This sets up a mistaken identity moment or two later on, but meanwhile Baloo grabs Mowgli & carries him off back into the jungle.
I had a passing, political thought around this time during the film: Did giving Khan a veddy British voice make him a colonial ruler-type, lording it over the natives (the other animals) as the Brits did in India for decades? Must’ve been a slow stretch, ‘cause I also noticed some very nice shadowing & light effects, like sun-through-the-leaves dappling on Bagheera as he walked under some trees. JB2 has any number of eye-pleasing visual touches like these: shafts of sunlight penetrating the forest, a flock of far-off cranes flying in formation, etc. The film also has a handful of very nice, not overdone or showy 3D/CGI shots that add some depth at selected moments.
Hey, surprise, Kaa’s back too; if only Sterling Holloway could’ve been there as well. Jim Cummings tries but he just doesn’t have the quavery quality that made Sterling so unique & memorable. (I have no idea if it’s possible or not, but Sterling always struck me as the inspiration for Carl Barks’ Gyro Gearloose character – I was very glad they gave Gyro a Sterling-ish voice in the DuckTales TV series.) Kaa has a redux scene with a domineering Khan and a redux hypnotizing/I’m gonna eat you scene, this time with Shanti who’s rescued by Ranjan. This time around though, Kaa is subject to repeated, Wile E. Coyote-type slapstick indignities every time he tries sssomething sssneaky. (Sorry, I had to do that at least once.) Baloo & Mowgli perform ‘Bare Necessities’ reprise #2, unaware they’re clobbering Kaa as he tries to pounce. This reprise ends with a backside shot of Baloo bopping away from the camera on all fours, Mowgli riding on his back, followed by the two of them floating down a stream – both all but frame-for-frame lifted from the original. (Kaa has a great line here: “I do so despise these song and dance routines.”)
An out-of-nowhere elephant stampede leads into another great line when a terrified Col. Hathi whispers ‘man…is in the jungle.’ (Must’ve been hanging out with Bambi’s mom.) It’s a search party from the village, but they don’t have much to do with the rest of the film other than setting up that in-joke and Mowgli’s realization that “they really must miss me.” (Must’ve been hanging out with Sally Fields.)
Next up is the movie’s blow-out production number, “W-I-L-D;” if there’s any reason not to wait for the video of the film, this is it. Baloo leads Mowgli to the abandoned temple from the first film, telling him “King Louie – he’s splitsville (Whaa? How? Why? Sorry folks, that’s all the explanation you’re gonna get – no ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ reprise for him) – me and the monkeys got this place set up real nice.” This number really rocks, with killer choreography and amazing camera moves (the perspectives on the animal chorus lines had me wanting to hit the ‘repeat chapter’ button on my DVD remote right there in the theater) as the animals sing about how they love to party. (Favorite lines: “tonight we’re gonna bring out the beast in you … and get our tails in the air.”) This sequence will play forever in the video rooms of every furry convention (see you there). But instead of making Mowgli want to stay in the jungle forever, the song somehow sets off a bout of homesickness, with Mowgli looking longingly at the village off in the distance.
Finally, it’s time for the big showdown, at a *different* abandonded temple – one with a very convenient, volcano-free river of lava flowing through a chasm right down its middle. Baloo briefly shows up to delay Khan’s pounce at a critical moment, but basically it’s Khan vs. Mowgli and Shanti – guess who wins? Again, it’s nice to see Mowgli use his wits to fight Khan, instead of the vultures telling him what to do. There’s a teasing moment where it looks like Khan takes a dive into the lava, but no – he gets crushed by the falling head of a giant dragon statue, but no – he’s imprisoned inside the head on a small island in the middle of the lava river at the bottom of the chasm, condemned to listen to Lucky’s jibes – until he eventually either starves to death or escapes but gets burned alive trying to climb the vertical wall out of the chasm? I wanna see cartoon death onscreen, dammit…
But here’s a funny part: before the big confrontation, Bagheera tells Baloo to go into the temple to help Mowgli – while he (Bagheera) stays outside with Shanti’s kid brother. Seems to me Bagheera coulda lent a paw in there himself; could there be a bit of a yellow streak on that black panther?
At the end, JB2 tries to have it both ways: Mowgli decides to return to the village, setting up a redux poignant goodbye between him & Baloo. Now feeling fully accepted, Mowgli calls Rhys-Davies ‘pop’ (traditional Indian form of familiar address to one’s father) – before sneaking out to the edge of the jungle to summon Baloo & Bagheera for yet another ‘Bare Necessities’ reprise. And they lived happily ever after, getting together to party whenever they wanted, enjoying the best of both worlds, having their cake & eating it too…
A ‘Be Like You’ reprise makes it into the film after all, over the closing credits ably performed by Smash Mouth. JB2’s story is credited to Karl Geurs, a name I remember from numerous Disney Afternoon episodes. And just in case you wre worried, the credits end with the acknowledgement “This film would not have been possible without the inspiration from the original motion picture and the work of its talented artists and animators.” (Frank ‘n Ollie, this one’s for you…) Hey, how about science fiction sequel to both ‘TaleSpin’ and ‘Jungle Book’ where a dimensional rift opens up, and the 2 Baloos come face to face? I suspect there’d be some very serious rivalry between Mowgli & Kit Cloudkicker…
Wow. Talk about someone who knows his Disney arcana. Nice work, man. Thanks for the review.
"Moriarty" out.
