The Jungle Book

How is everyone’s weekend going? I’ve been pretty busy and tired, but it’s been productive! I went to see The Jungle Book yesterday and I really wanted to share my thoughts on the movie. First off, I haven’t seen the animated Disney movie since I was a little kid and I think I only saw it once (since it wasn’t the typical fairy tale/princess Disney movie that I would watch over and over again) so I really didn’t remember much about the storyline. Basically, all I remembered was that it’s about a boy named Mowgli who grows up in the jungle, he has a friend who’s a bear, and I remembered some of the songs.

So far, I’ve been a fan of the new Disney movies that are live-action remakes of classics (i.e. Cinderella and Maleficent) and I saw that The Jungle Book got rave reviews from pretty much everyone so I really wanted to see the movie. Let me tell you, the movie did not disappoint in the slightest. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and the visuals were stunning. The relationship Mowgli has with the jungle animals (both good and bad) and to see what he sees of the natural world, (almost) untouched by man was beautiful and artfully done by Jon Favreau and the entire creative team.

I don’t get emotional watching movies very often –  I really have to be in the right mindset or it just has to strike me in a certain way, but I did tear up at one part of the movie! It’s not a spoiler to mention that young Mowgli is being hunted by a tiger so for the good of his family he has to leave. I started tearing up when he had to say goodbye to the pack of wolves that raised him! Who knew it could be heartbreaking to watch a boy say goodbye to a pack of wolves?

The acting by Neel Sethi was amazing. I find that many child actors are either phenomenal or  painful to watch. Fortunately, Sethi did a great job portraying Mowgli and I commend him for having to act entirely on his own since all the animals were CGI! I remember hearing somewhere that to help Sethi in the scenes they brought in Jim Henson’s Muppets so that he could pretend to be talking and reacting to someone/thing. The movie boasts an all-star cast for the voices of the animals too with the likes of Sir Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Giancarlo Esposito among others.

Instead of including the trailer like I normally would, I found this clip from Disney showing some behind the scenes footage of the cast doing the voices and some other little tidbits.

I’m so happy I saw this in the movie theater because it really adds to the whole effect and magic of the film. What made this movie even better is that they showed the trailer for the movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the upcoming Harry Potter spinoff about author Newt Scamander and the trailer alone looked amazing so you can bet I’ll have a review on that this fall!

Anyway, I highly recommend watching The Jungle Book! If you’ve already seen it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!