Review by Candice Lee Catullo
As the wolf’s jungle law goes: "The strength of the
wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf." The strength
of the THE JUNGLE BOOK is in the powerful spectacle, and the strength of the
spectacle is the striking details.
THE JUNGLE BOOK is a fanciful telling of Rudyard Kipling’s book
of the same name. It’s not the first time that someone has turned it into a
movie, but it’s my favorite. In a world where a giant orangutan lives in an
abandoned jungle temple, and every leaf on every tree a special effect, I
imagine it would be a slippery slope for moviemakers to take shortcuts, leaps
of judgment or think they could get away with cheating the audience. But they
didn't. Every fake tree, every talking critter, every detail was treated with
respect and seriousness – even when the story took dark turns, much deeper than
the original Disney version in 1967.
