Mowgli (Andy Serkis)

[Henry Gale]

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[Henry Gale]

After all of its production gestation and delays, the strangest thing here is that the overall outcome doesn't feel like a laboured work, an edit that's a compromised vision, or something too unique that the studio didn't know how to sell. Instead it unfortunately just feels like there simply isn't enough of a movie here to feel one way or the other about it. I wasn't a huge fan of Favreau's, but at least it has enough structure and confidently concocted formula to at least find entertainment and simple adventure in it. The best I can say for Serkis' work here is that I genuinely didn't know where it was going for most of it, but also including that fact for when it seemed to fast-forward to its conclusion and I only felt it was ending because of the narration tying it up.

There is one subplot and eventual twist, that even for all the talk about how dark and gritty™ this movie is, honestly didn't feel that way except for the one element of [

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where Bhoot's story goes. Not just with the final, brutally sad final interaction with Mowgli (which is honestly a moment where Mogwli is so mean that the movie kind of traps him and itself into not finding a way for a complete enough redemption afterwards, which I can't decide is brave and interesting or dumb and sloppy), but that shot of Mowgli discovering his decapitated, taxidermied head in the hunter's office just made me jump back audibly go "Oh no.."

] I'm not especially prone to jump scares and I feel like I'm largely desensitized to even most violence in movies (often left wondering, "Ooh, how'd they pull that off?!"), but maybe because this crossed an especially thematically messed-up visual with more uncanny valley of photo-real VFX that I was pretty unnerved by it. Not to mention the added layer of the fact that I didn't realize until the credits that the actor who plays that character is Serkis' son?! So many layers to that.

So I'd be willing to bet that as time goes on and most of this movie inevitably fades from my memory, that image will be the one thing that will stick with me. And hey, maybe that's more of an accomplishment than I can say for Favreau's version too. Otherwise, not much to see here. Being able to recognize the human actors in their performances is another interesting element to it, but really I think only Bale fares especially effectively with that. Sometime Serkis too as Baloo, but he also feels like he's doing some of his ape mannerisms with his mouth and arm movements.

[Dukefrukem]

This movie has better voice actors and worse CGI than The Jungle Book. Its also the outcome if the DCEU saw the Jungle Book and said "we would like to retell that story." Henry's spoiler description above is so spot on that I'm at a loss of words of how I reacted during both those reveals. I wasn't expecting this kind of dark and gritty story AT ALL. My wife picked this movie out to tonight and I said "sure" thinking it would be a nice bookend to one of our family Christmas party weekends. I kinda just assumed there would even be song's sung at some point. But that Bhoot subplot hit me so hard I kind of have to respect this movie doing something the Jungle Book wasn't able to portray, and it's getting to care about one of these characters so much, some kind of seeded emotion, whether that's tied to the Disney adaptations or not I'm not sure (but definitely likely), that I wanted to see Mowgli's redemption almost as much as I want to see Captain America's.