The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story

A retelling of the book from the kid's perspective. Which changes little, unsurprisingly. But it is not exactly the same as what we saw in the 1967 one.

This feels distinctly like it was perceived to be an easy way to make some more money off a property Disney already could use, and that had been profitable for them in the past. It isn't even the first live-action adaptation of the book. After all you just got to get animal wranglers to the location and that's it. It doesn't take CG. The human on-screen cast is minimal, though there are some extras. There's only one song, the very catchy and completely meaningless Monkey Time, which I'm sure drove some parents up a wall when this first came out, because their offspring wouldn't stop singing it. I appreciate that it sets up the danger of Shere Khan, as well as the fear of man's fire, almost immediately. We don't see those for a while in the original animated classic. He works with other species, somewhat like Scar. The film focuses on the threat the tiger poses to the man cub, and him learning how to hunt so that he is safer. Through this, they explore the coming of age themes of finding out where you belong, discovering who to trust and not making rash decisions.

This does manage you to get a lot of mileage out of some of the critters being cute and others being intimidating. Honestly, it would be so much better if not for the 90s children's film aspects. There's a near constant chatter - including the largely unnecessary narration, usually literally just spelling out what's plainly obvious from the visuals. I wouldn't rule out that it was a studio note, rather than always the plan. It never really stands still for very long, not trusting children to have a little more patience the way that the animated classic did, at least by today's standards. The puns are too plentiful, and so often they go for the most obvious one. Some of the voice cast is well chosen, and they do the best they can with what they're given. Considering how much of a boys club a bunch of these are, I do appreciate that Eartha Kitt (Catwoman herself!) lends her silky smooth vocals to Bagheera. I'm not sure I would claim that I thought Brandon Baker did that strong of a job, but considering his age and the script, he could be significantly worse. Certainly there's a sincere conviction to his performance. I mean, he spends a lot of this literally directly talking to creatures as if they understand him, and will answer, which of course they didn't on set. 4/10.

I loved this movie as a little kid. I was about 7 years old when it came out on VHS. I did see some characters were missing in the movie and some stuff didn't make sense. I didn't see Kaa. 1. I was asking why wasn't Kaa in this movie? 2.Since when did Mowgli have a wolf sister (instead of a wolf brother)? 3. How was Mowgli the adopted son of the wolf-leader Akela? 4. How come they only had a 7 year old kid lost in the jungle being taken in by wolves and he is still wearing clothes-the next scene his pants are torn (which look like shorts), he carries some kind of knapsack-the other scene he still wears the same pants he wore when he was in the human camp and vest but doesn't wear the shirt (still wears the satchel). That one scene when Mowgli grows a little older, the part when he swings on a vine and sees a human who is in a military uniform (and he narrates he wondered about his past). Then after running away for blaming himself about his mother's death he gets curious when he sees a human camp with real pack of man. Wouldn't a 7 year old kid if they grow up in nature around 11-12 years know about their human past? :/ 5. When Mowgli is lured by the chimps they call it "monkey-town." Looks more like a zoo place instead of being in a ruined city. What was with that abandoned hut full of old things? Who lived in that place?

The jungle book mowgli's story is a direct to video movie and i thought man is this movie trying to be like the three direct to video movies yeah i get that 1998 was a year we had direct to video sequels so speaking of that i'm gonna talk about the jungle book mowgli's story a movie that makes the 1994 adaptation look like a masterpiece mainly because it's based on the Rudyard Kipling book of the same name sure there some disgusting scenes like not even gonna ask at least the movie did have some funny moments like tabaqui face flopping into the river after being launched by shere khan which was funny.

The only thing that would have made this film worse would have been using CGI to make the animals mouths move. Listening to the horrible dialog performances was bad enough, without having to watch them speak as well.

After seeing the previews for most of Disney's live-action films, I'm convinced that we need to add an amendment to the Constitution banning Disney from making any more.

Sober writers might have been a plus, as well.

How can one studio make so many bad films--one after another. I mean, seriously, these things wreak.

Colors = pretty; Animals = beautiful; Story = lame with insultingly-stupid-and unrealistic dialog; Acting = bad; Special-effects = the worst, just horrible.

In fact, about the latter: if you've seen the sci-fi movies of the 1950s, particularly Ed Wood's movies, you get an idea how bad this film is in that regard.

If you want details of exactly how hokey some of these scenes were, how cheaply-made this film was, then read several of the others viewers' comments here. I agree with them: this film is so poorly constructed, it was embarrassing to watch. I only viewed it because I was impressed with the 1994 version of "The Jungle Book," with Jason Scott Lee, and I remembered the only animated fondly, as well. I was hoping this would be entertaining, too. Well......wrong!!