Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
Although it kickstarted an unfortunate trend that continues to this day, Jon Favreau’s 2016 “live-action” remake of The Jungle Book was not Disney’s first foray into remaking their animated classics. In fact, it wasn’t even their first stab at remaking that particular film. Overshadowed by its younger CGI sibling, you may well have forgotten that Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book even exists. The movie is conspicuously absent from Disney+ or any other digital services. That’s unfortunate as the film actually has quite a bit going for it.
Studios tend to shy away from the term “remake” these days, preferring to refer to such projects as a “re-imagining” of the source material. That’s usually worthy of an eye roll but in this instance, the word kind of fits. Unlike Favreau’s film, this one doesn’t have much in common with the 1967 animated movie. For that matter, it doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot to do with Rudyard Kipling, despite the author’s name appearing above the title.
The movie was the brainchild of Indian producer Raju Patel, who wanted to get a new adaptation of The Jungle Book in theatres to commemorate the book’s centennial in 1994. At first, Disney was approached to see if they’d be interested in distributing the independent production. But after meeting with Patel and executive producer Mark Damon, the studio got a lot more involved, agreeing to cofinance the film and doubling its budget.
Disney may have liked the project but they weren’t thrilled with the existing screenplay by Ronald Yanover and Mark D. Geldman. That’s where Stephen Sommers enters the picture. The studio had been happy with his work on The Adventures Of Huck Finn and asked if he’d be interested in tackling The Jungle Book. Sommers was a fan of the 1967 movie and had an affection for the jungle adventure pictures of the past. He was more than happy to sign on to rewrite and direct.
As the movie opens, Mowgli is roughly the same age or a little younger than he was in the 1967 version. He’s the son of Nathoo (Faran Tahir), a guide in the service of Colonel Brydon (Sam Neill), an officer in the British Army who’s recently arrived in India with his young daughter, Kitty. Mowgli and Kitty have already bonded over the fact that both their mothers died in childbirth.
The expedition takes a dark turn when some of its members violate the law of the jungle by killing some animals for sport, earning the wrath of Shere Khan, the tiger. That night, Shere Khan arrives in the camp seeking vengeance. Nathoo is killed in the attack and Mowgli is sent careening off into the darkness aboard a burning cart pulled by a pair of runaway horses. When the horses return to camp with the charred remains of the cart, everyone is convinced that Mowgli must have been killed.
Of course, Mowgli is very much alive and soon makes some familiar friends: Bagheera, the panther who leads Mowgli and his wolf cub, Grey Brother, to a welcoming wolfpack, and Baloo, who in this version is rescued by Mowgli as a cub. Most of Mowgli’s childhood is left off-screen. Years pass in the blink of an eye and we pick up the tale with Mowgli a strapping young man (and now played by Jason Scott Lee, who will be returning to this column a few times).
One fine day while Mowgli is lazing about in his favorite tree, a monkey pops up and snatches a bracelet off his wrist, a gift from Kitty. Mowgli pursues the little guy to a hidden city presided over by an orangutan who will come to be known as King Louie. Louie leads Mowgli to an enormous treasure room protected by Kaa the snake. Mowgli earns Louie’s begrudging respect by defeating Kaa and leaves Monkey City with his bracelet and a bejeweled dagger.
Returning to his own part of the jungle, Mowgli encounters Kitty, now grown into Lena Headey, for the first time since they were children. While Mowgli instantly feels that same bond, Kitty is cautious of the new guy, even though he “rescues” her from a bear by pretending to wrestle Baloo. Mowgli also meets Captain John Boone (Cary Elwes), a handsome soldier who intends to marry Kitty. Boone and Mowgli instantly dislike each other and Mowgli easily humiliates him when Boone challenges him to a fight.
Determined to see Kitty again, Mowgli sneaks into town and the British headquarters. Once inside, Kitty recognizes the bracelet and realizes this is her old friend. But despite Kitty’s insistence that he’s harmless, Mowgli is captured and thrown into the dungeon where his dagger attracts the attention of Boone and his closest allies, Lieutenant Wilkins (Jason Flemyng, making his film debut) and Sergeant Harley (Ron Donachie). After Boone learns the dagger is part of the vast treasure trove in the lost city of Hanuman, he becomes obsessed with tracking down the rest of the loot.
In the meantime, Kitty convinces her father of Mowgli’s identity. He allows her and the chief surgeon, Dr. Plumford (John Cleese), to attempt reintroducing Mowgli to the world of man. He’s quick to relearn English but some of the ways of man, including hunting for sport, continue to baffle and horrify him. At a party announcing Boone’s engagement to Kitty, Mowgli endures more humiliation and decides to return to the jungle. But Kitty has grown fond of the jungle boy. Disgusted by Boone’s continued mistreatment of him, she abruptly decides to call off the engagement.
With Kitty planning on returning to England, Boone no longer needs to even pretend to be a good guy. He collaborates with some brigands (and yes, this is exactly the type of old-fashioned movie that demands the use of the word “brigands”) to kidnap Kitty, counting on Mowgli to come to her rescue, at which point he’ll force him to lead him to Monkey City. Mowgli does, of course, but the perilous path to the treasure includes quicksand, cliffside combat, countless deathtraps and, lest we forget, the ominous watchful eye of Shere Khan.
So yeah, things are just a hair bit more intense in Mowgli’s jungle than they used to be. Sommers makes any number of choices explicitly designed to separate his film from its animated predecessor. Mowgli’s a lot older, there’s a whole lot more humans and the animals are (mostly) real. I know, crazy, right? What’s more, none of them speak, much less sing. And yet, the movie includes just enough nods and references to the original to remind you of it. King Louie wasn’t a Kipling character. He was introduced in the Disney cartoon. But he’s still here and the explanation for his name is genuinely clever. John Cleese has a line referring to the bare necessities of life. But there’s nothing that makes you think you’ve seen this before and would be better off just watching the original again, unlike some later Disney remakes.
More than anything, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book feels like a dry run for one of Stephen Sommers’ later films, the 1999 version of The Mummy. Both movies exhibit Sommeers’ love of and skill with old-fashioned adventure pictures. The Jungle Book is less awash in CGI as The Mummy, although a bit of it was used to bring Kaa to life. But the two movies definitely share a lot of DNA.
The Jungle Book is far from a perfect movie (but so is The Mummy, for that matter). It feels like it takes a little too long to get going, partly because the two kids playing the younger versions of Mowgli and Kitty are almost too young to deliver particularly interesting performances. And after so much of Mowgli’s childhood is brushed aside with a whip-pan, you begin to wonder why they even bothered. Still, the movie’s action sequences are fun, including a chase scene through town that could practically double as test footage for a live-action remake of Aladdin. The cast understands what kind of movie they’re in, which helps a lot, and they pitch their performances accordingly. And Sommers packs a lot of thrills into the movie’s climactic twenty minutes. I was not expecting to enjoy this one but I’m glad to be proven wrong.
Disney must have suspected they had a winner on their hands, positioning the film as their Christmas Day release in 1994. Christmas was on a Sunday that year, which is kind of a weird day to open a movie and skews its opening weekend numbers a little. Still, it did pretty well. In its first full weekend, it was in third place (behind Dumb And Dumber and Disclosure) with a little over $10 million. Overall, it earned around $43 million and critics, by and large, enjoyed it.
Overseas, it raked in even more money, bringing its total sum to over $70 million. That’s a decent, if not spectacular, hit for Disney but certainly a home run for producer Raju Patel. So it’s no wonder that Patel was eager to make another one. Disney, however, was not. Undeterred, Patel forged ahead with The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli & Baloo, which was released by TriStar Pictures in 1997. Confusingly, even though Rudyard Kipling did write a sequel called The Second Jungle Book, this is actually a prequel, focusing on young Mowgli growing up with Baloo and friends. So, The Second Jungle Book is really more of a remake of The Jungle Book than Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book was. Whew. Either way, the prequel tanked with audiences and critics and Patel seemed to be done with Kipling after that.
We, of course, are not. We’ll be getting to Jon Favreau’s take on the material and discussing the good, the bad and the CG-ugly of Disney’s most recent wave of remake mania in due course. But it’s interesting and a little surprising to note that their first stab at remaking an animated classic was done with good intentions of creating a truly different take on the material. Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book has its flaws but it’s generally a brisk, fun time at the movies. I will not be able to say the same for some of the other remakes we’ll be looking at, so enjoy this while you can.
VERDICT: Disney Plus